11/2/2009 8:20:02 AM

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By Tom Weber

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN 

There's a good reason the Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro has managed to achieve the milestone of having produced 100 plays: It has earned the trust of audiences.

	If you go "A Midnight Dreary" continues at the Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro through Nov. 15. For tickets and information, call (800) 657-7025 or (507) 467-2525, or go to www.commonwealtheatre.org.

Theater-goers in the region know that when they attend a play at the Commonweal, they will see something interesting. And the 100th offering, the world premiere of Scott Dixon's "A Midnight Dreary," which opened over the weekend, is no exception.

No, this play about the tortured life and work of Edgar Allan Poe is not a polished gem. It has scenes of exhilarating imagination, to be sure, and has been endowed by Dixon with a superb ending. On the other hand, the story is also told in a non-linear fashion that, in its hop-scotch approach to Poe's life, risks losing the audience at least momentarily at the start of each new scene.

The staging is stark and the lighting and projected video graphics are evocative. Then again, the full-color video of a beating heart seems to be out of character with the rest of the presentation.

Such inconsistency mars, but does not ruin, the experience of "A Midnight Dreary."

To Jerome Yorke goes the role of portraying Poe at all ages, and in all manner of positions -- and doing all of it in a nightgown.

The setting of the play is a Baltimore hospital where Poe, in a delirious state, relives episodes from his life. Yorke's finest moment, indeed one of the highlights of the play, is his recitation of Poe's "The Raven."

Stan Peal's portrait of publisher Rufus Griswold is one of the most inspired creations in this production.

Stela Burdt is Poe's slowly dying wife, while Stef Dickens plays Poe's mother, foster-mother and a nurse. David Hennessey is the stern foster-father, while Sheldon Rogers plays a variety of characters, including a bizarrely foppish Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

There appear to be two main threads weaving through this play. One focuses on the conflict between the creation of art and the commercial needs of publishers. Poe is portrayed as being on the creative, and losing, side of that battle.

The second theme attempts to explore the effects his youth -- from the early death of his mother to the stern upbringing by his foster-father -- had on Poe's work.

It all adds up to plenty of interesting reasons to trust, for the 100th time, the Commonweal.

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