From X-Press Magazine, 10-Feb-00
Reviewer: Jen Hasleby
Do you want to be entertained, gripping your chair as your eyes go big in amazement with terror and in awe of death?! If so catch this interpretation of Dawson Nichol's superbly scripted I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe.
Within minutes of starting this two hour monologue, David Hayward has you engrossed. Few actors have the ability to hold any viewers attention for such a span but Hayward achieves it easily, physically altering his energy to fit the stature of the characters that inhabit Joseph's world, the inmate of the institution, whose doctors are convinced this gentle soul's weakness is a deeply rooted psychotic illness.
Yes, institutionalised illness is entertaining, at least delivered in this manner as the child sees through the fallibility of his parents, the adolescent outlines the crassness of his father, and the professor explains Poe's foibles.
If you've ever wondered why Edgar Allen Poe's work has maintained an exalted place in literature for nearly two centuries, watch David Hayward perform Silence The Fable, The Raven and The Tell-tale Heart. The original energy of these poems is intact and you're there as the shadow of the goddess of the underworld passes by, you become the writer, you watch a psychopath collapse and confess.
Watching entranced as sweat rolls from the characters' faces without the protection of a celluloid skin is an intimate and personal experience rarely available to anyone who believes themselves a connoisseur of Thespians. If you've overlooked this opportunity grasp it, there's only three chances left.