About This Show
Shakespeare & Company celebrates the Halloween season with Kerfol & Poe, a special evening of suspense and horror featuring Edith Wharton’s chilling Kerfol, and a reading from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum.
Originally published in 1916, Kerfol follows the story of a young writer, Lydia, who finds herself abandoned by friends “on a dark and stormy night,” standing before the entrance of an enormous medieval estate that the locals say seems to be “haunted by a pack of wild dogs.” As the storm rages outside – lashing shutters, rattling windows and slamming dungeon doors – the tale unfolds inside where Lydia learns of an old and vicious Baron whose prized possession is his delicate young bride. Adapted by Dennis Krausnick and directed by Associate Artistic Director Michael Hammond, Kerfol is a tale of passionate young love, intolerable cruelty, heroic fidelity, noises in the night, bloody stairs and handprints on stone walls.
Each performance begins with a reading by well-known company actors of The Pit and the Pendulum (directed by Tina Packer), followed by a performance of Kerfol.