Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey

The writer and illustrator Edward Gorey specialized in locating humor in peril and gloom;

in his life, he could accurately be labelled a hoarder and a loner, yet his personality brimmed

with inspirations and enthusiasms. The playwright and director Travis Russ has devised a

brilliant solution for dramatizing this contradictory and solitary man: three actors, all of

them excellent and in perfect tune with one another, play the artist simultaneously at three

different ages, delivering a collective autobiographical monologue, sometimes delightedly

affirming each other’s accounts, sometimes gently contradicting them. Gorey may be the only

character onstage (unless you count his overstuffed old house on Cape Cod, which is evoked

in such loving detail that it deserves its own billing), but presenting his life in triplicate is like

taking a familiar melody and assigning it an unexpected set of chords.

Andrew Dawson