Grind bones, wracking coughs

What if, instead of transforming us into angels, love has the power to make us into monsters?

That’s one of the many thought-provoking themes in Don Nigro’s The Ogre, in production at Big Idea Theatre—and it’s no wonder the company selected it, given how many big ideas the play drops and scatters for later consideration.

Set in Brede Place, a rundown 14th-century English manor house that lacks, in 1899, even the convenience of an indoor toilet, The Ogre is the story of the last few months in the life of American journalist and author Stephen Crane.

Crane (Brian Harrower) is quite sick; he’s got tuberculosis—the AIDS of the 19th century—and malaria. He’s come to England with Cora Taylor (Liz Tachella Bowman), a reformed prostitute still married to someone else, though the couple pass themselves off as husband and wife. They’ve ended up in Sussex, surrounded by the literary elite: H.G. Wells (Gregory Smith, turning the father of science-fiction into a skirt-chasing bicyclist), Henry James (played with aplomb by Shawn B. O’Neal), Joseph Conrad (Jonathan Hansen, terribly funny and charming) and Ford Madox Hueffer (Ryan Snyder, in yet another memorable performance), who’ll change his name after 1914 to the less-Germanic and much more well-known Ford Madox Ford.

And there are ghosts.

These ghosts are enacting the uncompleted emotional business of—what? Their lives? The house’s?—which ever it is, they are fascinating to the dying Crane.

All that and it’s a very dark comedy.

You might take that as a contradiction, since literary issues large and small—art vs. profit, inspiration, the not-so-gentle business of translation—are all discussed, along with the nature of love and the terrible things it can lead us to enact on our beloved.

And yet, the piece is drenched with humor, from the sharp tongues of the writers and the lost souls of ghosts Marthe (Jessica Berkey) and the “ogre” of the title (Richard Garvin). As Crane, Harrower is a cynic through and through; he acknowledges reality even if no one else will, yet he’s drawn to the ghostly woman who haunts Brede Place. He’s well-matched with Tachella Bowman, who is quite funny and lovable, except for when she’s being a juggernaut.

This remarkably well-cast ensemble is directed by Gina Williams at a steady pace that doesn’t obscure necessary dialogue, though it does seem to drag a bit near the end of the first act. The set—designed by Harrower and Beth Edwards—is exceptionally well-done, giving a clear sense of the decaying manse and the gardens and woods behind. The costuming (Rachel Malin) and sound design (Jouni Kirjola) also deserve compliments, as they complement the entire piece so well.

But when a ghost is less dangerous than the one you hold closest to your heart—well, there’s that question of monsters again. It unfolds slowly, and at last leaves us wondering if this can rightly be called a tragicomedy, since the tension between the two forces is so great. All flaws seen to be laid directly at the playwright’s feet, for The Ogre suffers from the same difficulty that plagues Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: It can’t decide what it needs to be. It’s too realistic and frightening—in an existential way—for a comedy, yet it’s too funny to be a fully realized tragedy. It’s also extremely self-conscious: There’s a bit where the actors play literary characters discussing how awful it is to write about real people who aren’t around any longer to defend themselves.

While that’s closer to real life than any play ought to be, it’s also a bit frustrating. We like to know where the monsters are coming from, after all.