The Tell-Tale Heart Play at LAU Beirut

Join the Lebanese American University in Beirut as it hosts a performance of the play “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, and directed by Aya Saleh. The performance is taking place in Irwin Theater.

Synopsis: “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator who insists he is sane but suffering from a disease (nervousness) which causes “over-acuteness of the senses”. The old man with whom he lives has a clouded, pale, blue “vulture-like” eye which so distresses the narrator that he plots to murder the old man, though the narrator states that he loves the old man, and hates only the eye.

The narrator insists that his careful precision in committing the murder shows that he cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man’s room, in order to shine a sliver of light onto the “evil eye”. However, the old man’s vulture eye is always closed, making it impossible to “do the work”.