Poe Impersonator Takes Writer To Tell Tale Heart
The Sun: Sunday, January 19, 1997: Page 3B
By Elaine Tassy, SUN STAFF

Baltimore's most famous writer of the macabre — Edgar Allan Poe — died more than 147 years ago, but this weekend, a local actor who specializes in dramatizing his short stories is bringing him back to life.

Wearing a brown, wavy wig and a green cravat, David Keltz - partly into his Poe costume — said yesterday he expects people as far away as France and Japan to come see him today as he performs his one-man show: "A Visit to the Haunted Palace," the finale of a weekendlong Poe birthday celebration.

Poe, a celebrated — and some say tortured — horror writer born 188 years ago today, lived at 203 N. Amity St., a 2½-story house in West Baltimore, from 1832 to 1835 during the early years of his career. The Poe House, now a tourist attraction, is less than a half-mile from Westminster Hall and Cemetery — formerly a church — where performances will take place today at 12:15 p.m. and 3 p.m. in an auditorium that seats 250.

Inside, several feet above a grave where Poe was buried in 1849, Keltz will perform a melange of short stories and monologues culled from Poe's works.

"Poe's the one I like doing best of all," said Keltz, 52, who has done voice-overs for commercials, bit parts on "Homicide" and one-man shows based on the works of other writers. "It allows the greatest emotional range," he said, adding that Poe had a knack for creating psychotic characters bedeviled by monsters within.

Keltz, the son of a military officer, and a resident of Seton Hill, became interested in Poe's stories in junior high school, studied theater at a Florida college and fell in love with the one-person performance genre, researching enough Poe material to pull together a performance in 1992.

Around the country, about 25 people perform Poe, which initially made Keltz wonder if he would be able to make a living in the genre. He found, to his delight, that through word of mouth and with the help of two agents, he could book about 200 performances each year.

He plays Poe in an introductory monologue, then narrates the horror stories, such as "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Black Cat," playing two or more characters.

To look like him, the 5-foot-6-inch actor — who bares [sic] a slight resemblance to the dark-haired, angular-faced writer — puts 1-inch lifts in his shoes and puts mustache wax in his eyebrows to "wing them out a little bit." Then he dons a puffy-sleeved white shirt, dark pants and a multicolored vest, and he tops the ensemble off with a notch-collar mid-thigh-length, black double-breasted coat with cuffed sleeves and fabric-covered buttons.

With only an early-American chair, antique corner table and a few books as props, Keltz gave a visitor a taste of a typical performance: "His eyes resembled that of a vulture," he said in an eerie voice, doubling over the stage, leaning toward the audience. "Whenever it fell on me, my blood ran cold," he said, clearly swept up in the excerpt of dialogue from "The Tell Tale Heart," which he will perform this afternoon.

"He's phenomenal," said his production manager, Teresa Herold. "Some of the actors have the mind of Poe, but David really has the heart."

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