In "On the Verge" (or the "Geography of Yearning"), the audience encounters three upper-crust Victorian ladies, who've set out to explore the mythical Terra Incognita in 1888. They find themselves not only traveling through bogs and jungles but also through time, all while immersed in jovial discussions about gender and collecting an egg-beater every 20 years or so. While cooing at yetis, drinking afternoon tea with amicable cannibals, and arguing for 70 years over the appropriateness of women wearing trousers, these "sister sojourners" (Susan Shunk, Rahcel Sondag and Liza Fernandez) represent everything that's laughable about polite society, deciding to drop their loofas and pick up a machete instead.
With dialogue mirroring Charlotte Bronte on safari, playwright Eric Overmyer pays homage to the absurdly romantic style of Victorian women's travel writing, characterized by flippant asides about wrestling hippos and trekking through the Himalayas in a demure, ladylike way. While the three heroines are adept at bushwhacking through the language (among other, more perilous obstacles), the verbosity of the writing lends itself to confusion and one too many non-sequitur monologues. The pacing is also sluggish, and more could be done to differentiate the three main leads from their Victorian stereotypes.
Once the production finds its groove, however, the ladies' humorous misunderstandings about the cultures they find themselves experiencing—most notably, a fetishization of Cool Whip and Jacuzzis—give the storyline a much needed boost. Truly impressive is one-man-band Greg Matthew Anderson, who plays everything from a Fonzi-esque troll to a Chinese fortune-teller to a playboy nightclub owner to an elusive sage known simply as Mr. Coffee.
While each of the leads deliver brawny performances, the directionless and looping language, coupled with the leisurely tempo, tends to subsume the play's subtle relevance.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
