David Hayward

David Hayward actually refers back to one of his reviews when describing the character he's most known for playing - Joseph Walker from Dawson Nichol's 'I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe'.

"The best description we've heard actually came from one of our reviews which said something like 'cast Forrest Gump in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', add a little bit of Hannibal Lector and you're getting there sort of'! He's quite a mild, friendly, perhaps slightly introverted character normally, but he does have this weird ability to portray the people around him."

Playing Joseph is even trickier than this would suggest though - it's a one man play, going on in and outside the head of an institutionalised man who himself is inhabiting more than one persona, one perhaps being the master of the mysterious and macabre himself, Edgar Allan Poe...

"Joseph's in a psychiatric institution, and it becomes apparent as we get through the play that it's actually taking place inside his head, so that Joseph is actually talking to the voices inside his head, which is the audience. In the process of telling the story he takes on the persona of a number of other characters - some of them are characters who know Joseph but some of them are characters are from Poe's words.

"As he's going through his issues his doctors are asking him questions, and he discovers this book, Poems from Poe, and begins to develop an identification. And as we go through we discover that since he's been in the institution he's started to get this idea that he might actually be Edgar Allan Poe - a reincarnation of Edgar Allan Poe, because he has such a strong identification with Poe's words."

Though David assures us he is consciously aware he's not Poe, prior audiences and reviewers have sometimes almost been convinced otherwise. And he's achieved this effect despite not previously having "been a one man show or monologue type person". But, after having seen the writer Dawson perform the show himself in 1998, he "was so impressed with the show" and "hungry to do it" that he contacted Dawson and got the rights. Since then he's done several seasons of it and been received with acclaim, and he says it's become his favourite piece - importantly though, you don't have to be familiar with Poe's work to enjoy it, he adds with a nice Freudian slip to go with it.

"The nice thing about it is that Joseph - I mean Dawson the writer, has constructed it in such a way so that it is sort of an introduction to Poe, so if you're not familiar with his works it's not a problem. You'll be introduced fairly gently and seamlessly - about 30 per cent of the play is Poe's words, but the rest is Joseph telling the story and various other aspects of it."

William McGinley

I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe' performs in The Promethean From Wed 5 March