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“Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” says the all-too-curious narrator as his eyes befall a boon friend, Roderick, in Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Reuniting with his pal, he observes, not only a change in Roderick’s demeanor, but a stunning physical transformation–a person familiar, but mysteriously altered. Perhaps “stunning” is not a strong enough word to describe the visitor’s initial impression of Mr. Usher in The Hypocrites’ new staging of the tale, however. For, in director Sean Graney’s hour-long adaptation, Usher is portrayed by a woman in top-hatted drag. Well, three women actually, in breathtaking rotation.
So, why a cast of three formidable ladies? After all, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a rather masculine read. Two of the three literary main characters are men, and the sole female character, Lady Madeline, is written to be completely silent. Past onstage efforts have been made to feminize Poe’s exercise in Romanticism. One such production occurred in 2006, when Steppenwolf for Young Adults presented a musically luscious, but meandering production of “Lady Madeline” with the horror story told from the sister’s perspective. But never have women played so integral a role as they do here.
