Maverick director strips gothic horror down to its bare bones - The Tell-Tale Heart

Published on Friday 1 August 2008 17:32

The Tell-Tale Heart is a ghoulish one-man rendition of Poe, says Mark Fisher

THE last time we saw Martin Niedermair, he was in the middle of a bloodbath as a cross-dressing assassin in a flamboyant interpretation of Monteverdi's Poppea. One of the hits of last year's International Festival, it was staged by maverick Australian director Barrie Kosky, who made the surprising decision to filter in Cole Porter songs every time the going got tough. Despite scenes of hedonistic excess – and despite a company trained as actors, not opera singers – the production had a beauty and musical integrity that won over even the purists.

"The great thing about Barrie is he doesn't care for all those labels and puts in what he likes," says Niedermair, who played an intoxicated Ottone, the character involved in a failed murder plot against the adulterous Poppea.

All of which gives you absolutely no idea of what to expect when Niedermair and Kosky return to the EIF with The Tell-Tale Heart. Where last year's offering was a feast of baroque excess with an added dash of Porter's world-weary cynicism, this year's production is a ghoulish one-man rendition of an Edgar Allan Poe story about a murderer betrayed by his guilty conscience. In place of revue-style extravagance, we find the chilling intimacy of gothic horror.

"It's not quite as opulent as Poppea," laughs Niedermair. "It's very minimalist. All we have is the staircase, the actor, the pianist and the story."

The mood is different, but the boundary between theatre and music is still blurred. As with Poppea, Kosky himself provides the show's live piano accompaniment, heightening the power of the text by adding songs by Bach, Purcell and Hugo Wolf. "Through the singing, he reveals another element of his character," says the director, whose career has encompassed stints at the Adelaide Festival and the Vienna Schauspielhaus.

The two men first staged this English-language version in Melbourne last year, after conceiving it in German for Vienna in 2004. For much of the show, Niedermair, a younger figure than you'd expect from Poe's tale, stands stock still, demanding our attention with the smallest of movements and vocal inflections in what Kosky describes as a "tour de force" performance.

For the actor, the transition from German to the original language of Poe has been fascinating. "There's a lot of black humour that comes out when you perform it, but the humour didn't really develop in German," he says. "I still don't know whether it's part of the language or because people get the author. People here in Austria don't have that connection with Poe that they might have in English-speaking countries."

Notwithstanding the dark humour, however, the fear factor is at the fore. "Martin is a lovely guy and I think people get sucked in by the charm," says Kosky. "It's a very haunting show and quite melancholic. We've performed it over 60 times and it's very rare for the audience to make any sound. I've never done a show like it. The audience are frightened to cough."

• The Tell-Tale Heart, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh (0131-473 2000), August 9-11

• www.eif.co.uk