Renowned as an artist, author, and godfather of Goth, Edward Gorey was first and last a dramatist. This ingenious multimedia memoir is a homage to his famous pop-up books, and a rare backstage tour of his lifelong involvement in theater. From Harvard, where Gorey and roommate Frank O'Hara helped found the Poets' Theatre, to New York, where he designed the Tony-award-winning costumes and sets for Frank Langella's Dracula, to Cape Cod, where he steered his troupe of actors and puppets through twenty-odd original "entertainments," Edward Gorey delighted in uncoiling weird little stories into four-dimensional mini-dramas. Some were his familiar alphabet books and tales such as The Insect God and The Curious Sofa; others, such as Blithering Christmas, he composed specifically for venues from Provincetown to Cotuit to Woods Hole. This affectionate recap by his longtime friend and collaborator CJ Verburg is a great gift to any Edward Gorey fan: full of rare original drawings and notes, color photographs, script and review excerpts, and live links to film clips of Gorey himself performing onstage.
