One Man Poe – Ripon Arts Hub

Writer: Edgar Allan Poe

Adaptor and Director: Stephen Smith

One Man Poe? One word, GO! Whether you are a Poe afficionado or your understanding of his work extends to the parodies of The Tell Tale Heart and The Raven lovingly created by The Simpsons, these performances will bring the famous (and not so famous) short stories of the father of gothic horror to life.

Adaptor, writer, and performer Stephen Smith created One Man Poe as a personal passion project during those tentative post-covid days as theatres began to re-open. Over the past five years Smith has taken his original four adaptations throughout the UK and across the world, including Off-Broadway in NYC. In 2024 came a sold out run at the Edinburgh Fringe – winning The Spookies Award for ‘Best Horror Solo Show’ – before returning in 2025 into a larger venue and winning The Derek Award for ‘Best Overall Show of 2025”.

It is very easy to see why. Smith’s admiration and understanding of the source material is evident from the moment he enters the stage. Presented in two acts for this performance, the audience were treated to almost word-for-word retellings of The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, and of course, probably Poe’s most famous offering, The Raven. Each work is embodied within Smith’s detailed characterisations which equally bring the expected gothic creepiness and the perhaps less expected humour out of the original text. Smith is a very physical actor which lends itself wonderfully to the melodrama of Victorian-era gothic writing but to Poe’s work in particular. These performances – having been adapted with very little change to the source text at all – rely on the audience being able to build the scene around the character, and Smith’s physicality allows for that in abundance, especially during The Pit and The Pendulum.

The soundscape for these tales (with sound design by Joseph Furey and Django Holder) wonderfully enhances the atmosphere created by Smith’s performances without ever being overstated or intrusive, and while still allowing the audience to impart their own imagination upon the scene before them.

It is worth noting that for Smith’s performances of One Man Poe – produced by Threedumb Theatre of which Smith is Artistic Director – usually only two of Poe’s works are presented. This will be the case for the upcoming Edinburgh Festival Fringe where included in the rotation are two new additions to Smith’s already impressive word count of over 13,000 – The Business Man, and The Case of M. Valdemar, two of Poe’s lesser-known tales. Your reviewer points this out because the language of the source material is so strikingly rich and intense and has such psychological depth and, while this is its very strength and what makes Smith’s performance so vibrant and tangible, over the course of two hours and four equally tortured characters it can – particularly to a modern ear – start to feel quite dense and almost hypnotic. Certainly, the decision to finish with The Raven was wise as its format as a narrative poem, with its unique rhyme and repetition structure, were a welcome relief from Poe’s often heavy prose.

Please don’t let that put you off as you would usually see just two of the tales in one sitting. What Smith has created is far more than a simple retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s work; it is a masterclass in storytelling that captures the wit, horror, melancholy, and humanity at the heart of the original texts. Performed, and crafted with immense respect for its source material, One Man Poe is an experience that deserves to be seen by lifelong Poe devotees and curious newcomers alike.

Reviewed on 10 July 2026

Running at Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 7 to 29 August (not 16 or 23), with additional previews in London and Colchester