All John Astin has to bring to Ogden for his one-man production of "Edgar Allen Poe: Once Upon a Midnight. . . ." is the pendulum.
Peery's Egyptian Theatre already has a pit.Besides gaining far-reaching fame for their work in the realm of horror (Poe as author of many tales with a dark, sinister edge; Astin as Gomez in TV's long-running comedy, "The Addams Family"), the author and the actor also share a geographic connection.
Poe died in Baltimore, Md., in 1849. Astin was born in the same city 81 years later.
But Astin's parents were both born and reared in Salt Lake City, he said during a telephone interview last week from his Los Angeles home.
"One of them went to East High School and the other went to West," he said, and he was pleased to hear that both schools were still functioning.
"And both of them attended the University of Utah. My mother always told me there was an enormous amount of artistic activity in Utah. When I was 6, we drove out to Salt Lake City from Washington, D.C. (where Astin grew up), and I remember there were water fountains on the street corners," he said.
"There was a time when there were more Astins in Salt Lake City than anywhere else," he added, noting that there are also several Mackenzies, Midgleys and Varleys sprinkled through his genealogy. "I would expect that most of my relatives in the area are Mormons -- not the Mackenzie ones, but the Varleys and the others. I know I have a lot of Mormon ancestors. I've always been interested in the history, and, from time to time, I've corresponded with relatives in Utah."
Astin's interest in history is also what drew him into the Edgar Allan Poe project.
"I had wanted to put together some material (for a one-man show) that I thought would have some value in society. I was researching some authors, and Poe was at the top of the list," he said.
About this same time, about six-and-a-half years ago, playwright Paul Day Clemens, "came to me with his play about Poe and asked if I would consider doing it. I optioned it right away and began working with Paul and Ron (Ron Magid, Paul's collaborator) on rewrites," Astin said.
Following a reading and some more tinkering, the play had its first public production in Des Moines, Iowa, "where we played for a week, had sold-out performances and got a wonderful critical reaction to it. We were encouraged.
"We went on to mount a more complete production, with new lighting, and we had an original musical score composed.
"A year later, we scheduled two weeks in Florida and ended up doing four -- all in Sarasota. It's an artistic community and it was a good place to do the show. Then, the following year, 1997, we had our first commercial run; we ran for about three months at the Mercury theatre on the north side of Chicago.
"At that time, interestingly, we thought the play was only suitable for small theaters, but we were wrong. We've found that it plays even better in larger, full-size theaters. I think, by now, we've played in nearly half of the U.S. states, and this will be our first Utah engagement. I'm very much looking forward to it," Astin said.
He explained that "Once Upon a Midnight" is different from Hal Holbrook's one-man "Mark Twain Tonight" production. "It's not a series of anecdotes. Hal's is more of "An evening with . . .," but this is really a play about Poe, an effort to straighten out the record on Poe's life."
Clemens and Magid drew quotes from more than 20 of Poe's stories, a dozen of his poems and several other related works, weaving them into what the Sarasota Herald-Tribune critic, Jay Handelman, called a seamless biographical style. "Astin . . . creates a fascinating picture of this troubled writer," said Handelman.
Within the framework of the play, Astin portrays Poe, a writer considered to be the father of modern detective fiction -- a misunderstood genius, a visionary and a man of many contradictions. The play confronts the misconceptions and distortions held by many about Poe's life.
For Astin, appearing onstage is just getting back to his roots as a performer. His early training was in Shakespeare and works by other classical dramatists.
He appeared in the original New York companies of "The Threepenny Opera" and James Joyce's "Ulysses in Nighttown" and portrayed Vladimir in "Waiting for Godot" and Fagin in "Oliver!"
Oddly enough, Astin commented, "I had no intention, when I became an actor, of ever appearing in movies or television. It never even occurred to me that I would ever act in a movie or TV show. My focus was strictly the stage and, at that time, I would settle for mere subsistence to work in theater."
Then he did shift into movies, with roles in such films as "West Side Story," "That Touch of Mink," with Doris Day and Cary Grant, and several others.
But, to audiences worldwide, he is best known as Gomez Addams, the slightly crazed patriarch of the original "Addams Family," the hit TV series based on Charles Addams' classic New Yorker cartoons.
"The Addams Family" and Poe's tales of terror are on opposite ends of the "horror" scale. The former was a macabre but mirthful TV comedy. The latter became best known for such dark, mysterious stories as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Raven," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Murders of the Rue Morgue" and "The Pit and the Pendulum."
"EDGAR ALLAN POE: ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT. . . ." will play one night only, on Friday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m., at Peery's Egyptian Theater, 2415 Washington Blvd., Ogden.
Tickets are $22 for adults, $20 for senior citizens and $14 for students. Group discounts are also available. For reservations, call the theater at 395-3227 or WSU's Dee Events Center box office at 626-8500 or 1-800-WSU-TIKS.
You can reach Ivan M. Lincoln by e-mail at ivan@desnews.com