Stage Reviews : Drama About Poe at the Tamarind

the cliche of the drug-abusing author wracked by inner demons, for example--without compounding them with far-fetched plotting. Lawrence Riggins, alas, really does a number on Poe in his new play, “Seed of Darkness,” at the Tamarind Theatre.

This particular Poe (George Jenesky, a ringer for the poet, in a terminally mannered performance) is bedeviled from two directions. On one side are his many scorned women, especially Marjorie Harris’ Elmira, whom director Ron Burrus places center stage like a nattering marionette. While we’re figuring this out, Poe is suspected by the police of a series of grisly murders eerily close to those in his fiction.

It is too preposterous to consider Poe as a suspect, so Riggins’ mystery can’t help but be a non-starter. More crucially, his language hardly conjures up Poe’s mood or tone. Burrus stages this in dim light (by Richard Taylor) and on a visually dead (and uncredited) platform set. Not exactly the stuff nightmares are made of.