After Him, the Deluge
Mesmeric Revelation…Before Edgar Allen Poe has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poe. The second play that Los Angeles writer/director Aaron Henne has created with Berkeley’s Central Works, Mesmeric Revelation… is named after an 1844 Poe short story that’s almost entirely in dialogue, a metaphysical conversation about the nature of God, matter, consciousness and reality with a client in an induced mesmeric trance. But the show isn’t at all based on the Poe story, although there are a few nods to it in subject matter and stretches of dialogue. Instead it’s set shortly before the French revolution, focusing on the man who came up with mesmerism in the first place.
Curiouser and Curiouser
There’s something mighty strange going on at the Berkeley City Club. The latest play by Central Works has a very different feel from other collaboratively created pieces the company has done in the past. Some of that feeling is inevitable because A Man’s Home… is based on Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and the German-Czech author’s atmosphere of labyrinthine bureaucracy and foreboding pervades his work so much that anything like it is now called “Kafkaesque.” But no doubt much of it as well comes from the unfamiliar aesthetic of writer/director Aaron Henne, who’s new to the company.
