by Megan Russell-Davis The sun was just setting on the historic Red Top Jail as ticket holders arrived for opening night of “An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe” put on by the Llano Community Theater (LCT). The Romanesque Revival structure, built in 1895, is part of Llano folklore with rumors of ghostly inhabitants, making it a perfectly eerie location to take in Poe’s works.
Entering the jail will send a shiver up your spine on a normal day, but add the fall of dusk, red lighting, flickering candlesticks, and macabre vignettes and you have set the scene for a truly spine tingling experience. Director Rebecca Flynt welcomed an intimate group of about 20 people with a brief history of Poe, who died in Baltimore in 1849 at age 40. While his writing was respected, he was not a well liked man, she explained through fascinat-ing anecdotes.
“The Raven,” Poe’s most famous work, was dramatically portrayed by former LCT president George Fricke. A special guest appeared about a quarter of the way through, inciting gasps from the audience. Four more writings were performed by Melissa Keilman, Elke Jones, Charley Jordan III and Jeff Scoggins. The duration of the show is about 1 hour.
Once the readings conclude, there are more tricks and treats to be found in the surrounding rooms of the jail’s first floor. Guests can even take a flashlight tour of the upper floors ... if they dare!
The second round of performances are this weekend, 7:00 pm, on October 24th, 25th and 26th. Call the Llano Visitor’s Center to purchase tickets. $5 of each ticket sale will go directly into the continued restoration of the Red Top Jail.
