Sure, you can make pumpkin soup, buy some fall-spiced candles or purchase some candy for the imminent trick-or-treaters, but nothing really puts you in the Halloween spirit like a little Edgar Allan Poe. And a simple but clever little production over at the Playbill Café on 14th Street serves up just the right dose of humor, horror and just plain creepiness to put you in a sufficiently macabre mood for October.

Poe 2000, staged by the Meat & Potato Theatre, a new troupe boasting its second production in the D.C. area, takes ten of Poe's tales, many of them well-known, and puts its own unique spin on them. From bare-bones readings to modernizations to, well, rap interpretations, the various takes largely succeed in capturing the spirit of Poe's works, while doing something a little different and still keeping them accessible.

The director has many tricks up his sleeves to individualize the pieces, from costumes to sound effects. A day-glow reading of "The Raven" articulates the shifting state of mind of the narrator by giving him different pairs of glowing eyes throughout the poem, their expressions ranging from shocked to menacing. Actors gracefully use a marionette to enact "The Pit and the Pendulum," awarding an almost ballet-like feel to the movements of the captured prisoner. And Poe 2000 rightly draws attention to some of Poe’s lesser-known classics, from "Ms. Found In A Bottle" (definitely the show’s spookiest offering) to the great detective story "The Purloined Letter".

Poe 2000 is a small affair – the blackbox theater in the back of the café seats just a handful, and the play’s various roles are mostly played by two actors, writer/director Tobin Atkinson and Katie Taylor-Rollins (Jeffrey Wisniewski lends an able hand for a few scenes). Atkinson and Taylor-Rollins both have the gravitas to tackle the two traditional readings of Poe’s poetry, "The Haunted Castle" and a mournful rendition of the haunting "Annabel Lee". But they also have comic timing and a variety of colorful accents to spare when enacting the play’s lighter sections.

There are a couple missteps. A rap version of "The Bells" is an interesting idea, but is executed rather clumsily. A modernization of "The Cask of Amontillado" strips the piece of a good deal of its eeriness, though the mason’s new motivation for his crime is amusing, and the third-party-provided sound effects are a neat touch. Atkinson's decision to separate each tale with snippets from Poe’s own writings on literature leans a little less toward the profound and more toward the pretentious. But these are small complaints about an ambitious and effective production that sets the mood for the season ahead.

The show runs Thurs-Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. at Playbill Café, 1409 14th St. NW. Tickets can be purchased by calling 703/587-5730; visit the show’s website for more details.