Andrew Palmer continued his enthusiastic support of Ripon Theatre Festival and found Stephen Smith's virtuoso solo turn as Edgar Allan Poe left him breathless — exhausting, exhilarating and utterly captivating, in a masterclass in gothic horror that stopped his heart.

There are shows that entertain, and there are shows that leave you wrung out with admiration. One Man Poe, Stephen Smith's solo tour through four of Poe's most terrifying tales, is unmistakably the latter. Billed as coming from the "Godfather of Gothic Horror", Poe was a genuine pioneer of the genre, and though his stories are approaching their two hundredth birthday, they have lost none of their power to unsettle. Smith, working faithfully from Poe's original 1840s text, does not so much perform these stories as inhabit them.

The evening opens with The Tell-Tale Heart, Smith beginning on the floor of the stage, and from that first moment the tone is set: this is theatre stripped to its essentials, one performer, one text, and an audience held entirely in his grip. His depiction of a narrator who insists, too loudly, that he is not nervous, left more than one member of the audience wondering whether they ought to be nervous themselves. It is here that his physical control first properly announces itself: the twitches, the wide, fixed eye, the sense of a mind fraying in real time.

The Pit and the Pendulum follows, and Smith's vocal range is evident throughout, his lithe, almost gymnastic physicality carrying him around the imagined cell as he slides and falls, and every swing of that pendulum feels earned, the tension mounting with a precision of timing that never once slackens.

After the interval came The Black Cat, and this reviewer, drink guiltily still in hand, found the humour rather harder to summon. Poe's tale of alcoholism, violence and volatility is bleak material, and Smith does not flinch from it. His protagonist — nameless, and never properly introduced to us, which only deepens the unease — is a man undone by his own madness, driven by creatures he cannot escape to murder his own wife. Smith plays him as murderer, drunkard and madman all at once, without ever tipping into caricature.

The night closes with The Raven, and it is here that Smith's transformation between characters and registers reaches its fullest, most brilliant expression. His sheer stamina, after three tales already behind him, is remarkable, and there is real adoration and reverence in how he approaches Poe. The audience cannot help but be swept along, entranced alongside him.

Lighting and sound do serious work here too, never overwhelming the performance but shading it, sharpening the horror at exactly the right moments. Cats and rats abound, so anyone with a phobia of either should be warned. Yet for all the gothic dread, there is impish humour threaded through as well — the production is a show that will send you home rattled, perhaps, but smiling too.

Smith's makeup and costume changes are handled with real craft, and his commitment throughout is total. It is exhausting to watch, in the best possible sense, and full marks go to Katie Scott and the festival's organisers for programming it. One can only hope Smith is invited back — his Monet monologue, reportedly next on his list, would be very welcome in Ripon.

If Stephen Smith is ever advertised at a theatre near you, go!


Ripon Theatre Festival continues click here for more

Stephen Smith appears in Joan Greening's A montage of Monet at York Medical Society today July 11th at 3pm.

And from 7 -29 August at Edinburgh Fringe Greenside @Riddles Court