By: Cameron Knight
Beverly Hills, CA (The Hollywood Times) 9/19/2026 – A single red light falls across the stage as C. Auguste Dupin returns to the scene of an impossible crime. Surrounded by darkness, he studies what others have overlooked and follows the evidence toward a solution no one else can see. In that moment, the line connecting Edgar Allan Poe’s detective to Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Benoit Blanc becomes unmistakable.
Theatre 40’s world premiere of The Case-Book of C. Auguste Dupin brings together Poe’s three Dupin mysteries, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter, adapted and directed by John Strysik. The production presents them as three chapters in the development of a character whose methods helped establish the rules of modern detective fiction.
At the center of it all is Michael Mullen as Dupin, delivering a performance that commands the intimate Theatre 40 stage. From his first appearance, Mullen seems less like a modern actor performing a period role and more like a man who has stepped directly out of Poe’s pages. His voice, posture and concentration create the sense that Dupin is always thinking, even when he is standing completely still.
Mullen makes the detective’s process of “ratiocination,” exact logical reasoning, feel theatrical rather than academic. Dupin studies a single hair, questions what appears impossible and repeatedly asks, “What has occurred that has never occurred before?” The clues may be small, but Mullen lets the audience watch the larger mind assemble them. His performance anchors the evening and makes it difficult to look anywhere else.
The production’s visual choices strengthen that performance. Jeff G. Rack’s set surrounds the actors with dark timber, rich color, and the atmosphere of another century, while Derrick McDaniel’s lighting becomes especially effective when a single red beam isolates a character and carries the audience back into a crime scene. The effect is simple but striking, letting Dupin’s explanation unfold as something more immediate than a detective merely recounting evidence.
Before the performance, Strysik compared the structure of the production to a classical concerto with three movements paced “fast, slow, fast,” an approach that gives each case its own identity while connecting the three stories into a larger portrait of Dupin. The narrator, a Poe stand-in Strysik refers to as Edgar, helps guide the audience between the mysteries while serving as Dupin’s observer and chronicler, much like Dr. Watson would later do for Sherlock Holmes.
Strysik also wanted the production to reveal a side of Poe audiences may not expect. “I hope they see Poe as more than a horror writer, because there’s a lot of funny stuff in this,” he told The Hollywood Times before the show. That humor keeps the evening from feeling like a literary lecture, letting Poe’s ideas land as entertaining as well as mysterious.
The Case-Book of C. Auguste Dupin succeeds because it doesn’t just tell audiences that Dupin influenced the detectives who followed him. It lets them watch that influence take shape. For mystery fans, the familiar pieces are all here: the locked room, the impossible crime, the overlooked clue, and the brilliant outsider called in when conventional investigators have reached their limit.
More than 180 years after Dupin first appeared, Theatre 40 makes a convincing case that Poe’s original detective still deserves the spotlight. Mullen’s performance alone is worth the trip, but the evening offers something richer: a chance to meet the character who started it all.
The Case-Book of C. Auguste Dupin runs through October 18 at Theatre 40’s Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $35 and can be reserved by calling (310) 364-0535 or visiting Theatre40.org.
