By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Seniors were in for a spooky night this past Wednesday, October 18th, as actress Michéle LaRue performed some Halloween Haunting Tales at The Center in Medfield. The two stories that she performed were Elia W. Peattie’s “The House That Was Not” and Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “The Shadows On The Wall.”
The room was packed with excited seniors ready to hear some creepy and spooky stories just in time for Halloween coming up. Before the performance began, LaRue could be seen mingling with guests while also getting herself ready for the show.
According to LaRue’s performance program, she “revels in writings from America’s Gilded Age and has toured nationally with her growing repertoire of “Tales Well Told” for two decades. She has a long, ongoing relationship with New Jersey’s East Lynne Theatre Company, which uniquely specializes in American plays of the late 18th and 19th centuries. She began performing short stories on the porches and in the parlors of Victorian Cape May, NJ, mentored by the Company’s founding producing artistic director – the late Warren Kliewer.”
With this very impressive resume, LaRue was the absolute perfect actress for this type of performance, in which all were in awe of her amazing talent! As she began her performance, she addressed the audience, “Thank you for the warm welcome. This evening I have brought you an old fashioned Halloween, ghost stories from two American writers: Elia W. Peattie and Mary Wilkins Freeman of Chicago and Omaha and of Massachusetts and New Jersey respectively. … After Warren’s mentorship and reading about the late nineteenth century, I fell in love with this period. Now life in those Victorian homes may not have been as civil as we would like to believe it had been, but home entertainment was certainly less complex and more personal. Reading aloud was a big part of that entertainment. Long before the invention of the radio or electronics, stories were often read aloud.”
With this in mind, LaRue performed each story just like they would within that time period. Audience members could feel each character's personalities truly being brought to life. From the emotions these characters felt, to their array of accent’s, eyes were glued on LaRue as she told these haunting tales. One can only hope that she will return to The Center for another mesmerizing performance in the near future!
