Heart of Darkness

Performing The Tell-Tale Heart in the Mutter? Poe would approve.


	print	email	reply

Published: Sep 1, 2010

Neal Santos

Sitting in a side room at the Mütter Museum, velvet ropes isolating us from passers-by, director Domenick Scudera holds up a postcard for The Tell-Tale Heart.

"I was going to put, you know, just, 'POE, ZAK, MUTTER MUSEUM' on here," he says, revealing a playful smile. "I didn't go that far. But to me that blending of things sounded perfect — like it might attract some people."

And, for those familiar with the local theater scene, there really is something intriguing about that strange brew. Over the last 15 years, actor John Zak has developed a reputation as a go-to guy for Shakespearean clowns — and just about any other comedy genre, for that matter. He has a presence and delivery all his own. It's a quality that is impossible to pin down in print — a kind of fascinating oddness that commands attention. If you can picture a melding of Tommy Smothers, Peter Stormare and Tim Conway, you might be getting the idea.

"I can't help it, it's just ... I'm funny, OK?" says Zak over the phone, with a bit of feigned annoyance and a little stutter that really does make the sentence funny. "I have been slightly frustrated that I don't get seen for anything outside of comedic roles. I just want to say, you know, 'I can do more,' so I hope this helps people see me in a slightly different light."

Scudera, too, is no stranger to comedy. Over the last five years or so, he's written and performed the comedic one-man shows Kilts Forever and Festus the Three-Legged Wonder Dog. And he's been directing the Philly sketch comedy group Waitstaff for the last three years.

"When I was making my living freelancing, pretty much the only thing I got hired to do was comedy. That's just how people knew me," says Scudera, who is now a professor at Ursinus College. "But that's not all that I'm interested in. At the college I get to play with other types of material, so right now it's nice to bring that part of my interest to the city."

He's spent about $1,000 of his own money so far, which he hopes to make back in ticket sales. Location should be a selling point. After getting turned down by the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, the Mütter — Philly's own world-famous collection of 19th-century medical oddities — seemed "sufficiently creepy" for Tell-Tale.

In a small interior room, Zak will confront the close-seated audience in a straitjacket. "The way the piece is written, he's explaining why he's not insane," says Scudera. "It's like a thesis: 'Listen to this and you will understand that there's nothing wrong with me.' ... That's why it's so stage-worthy. We see the transformation before our eyes. It slowly and methodically makes its way to a crazy, scary place."

Comedians understand pacing like nobody else, and these two funnymen have made pains to preserve every single word of Poe's classic. It's a slow build they're after.

"Poe was very aware of the entertainment value of his work," says Scudera. "He wrote about wanting mass audiences to be attracted to his work. He didn't write it to be on the stage, but you could take every word, and it seems that way — it sounds really wonderful aloud."

(b_walsh@citypaper.net)

The Tell-Tale Heart runs Sept. 4 and 11-12, $10, Mütter Museum, 19 S. 22nd St., 215-413-1318, livearts-fringe.org.