Monday, 5 June 2006 12:45 pm
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deckardcanineThe Arena Stage season is over, and it ended last Friday with Eric Overmeyer's On the Verge or the Geography of Yearning. Despite reportedly rave reviews (I didn't read any), the theater had a very small attendance, probably because it was the last of eight shows for which they paid. Several left during the first half hour, which my fellow ushers agreed was slow. I had a lot more patience, however, because I'd been looking forward to the play ever since I heard of it at the start of the season. Just looking at the cast list -- three women for the main characters and one man for eight others -- told me that this wasn't a "going nowhere" play.
It turns out to be the weirdest professional play I have ever seen or read. (I specify "professional" because of a college student's musical in which I performed, one so incoherent that I would've scrapped the script and salvaged the tunes.) By the time one of the Victorian explorers comes across an "amulet" that we would call an eggbeater, it becomes clear that their travel is not just geographical. There is no offered explanation for why Terra Incognita enables them to osmose random future concepts like mohair, but they have different reactions to it. That's really the only point, aside from entertainment, that I can find in the play: the question of whether to embrace or even accept what comes. Should they root themselves in a particular year, as they eventually can? (Interesting that the first one to leave 1955 was played by an African-American in this production.)
But the fun isn't all in the screwball anachronisms. The playwright had a lot of fun with words. You need to be pretty well-educated for some of them, particularly near the beginning before their language, shall we say, devolves into modernity. One of the women keeps having to correct her own malapropisms, some of which are pretty simple (e.g., "famous" for "famished"). There are also a few time-irrelevant weirdos such as a snowball-throwing yeti and an apparent cannibal who unwittingly takes on the traits and memories of whomever he eats. Just to vary the humor, I guess, as was the reported but unseen packing of a cello at the start of the expedition.
The stage setup was especially unique. Fichandler Theater, with seats on all four sides, does tend to have more abstract scenery than the adjoining traditional Krieger Theater, which may make it better for rapid scene changes. This time, the stage was a vented diagonal strip with deep pockets on the sides. This facilitated the simulation of bridges, streams, and other straight lines to travel, and the pockets lit up with stars for nighttime. Overhead lights conveyed a whole lot, such as green designs for thick foliage.
If On the Verge is fun to watch, it must be exceedingly fun to perform, especially as the male actor. I wonder if I'll ever catch another production of it.
It turns out to be the weirdest professional play I have ever seen or read. (I specify "professional" because of a college student's musical in which I performed, one so incoherent that I would've scrapped the script and salvaged the tunes.) By the time one of the Victorian explorers comes across an "amulet" that we would call an eggbeater, it becomes clear that their travel is not just geographical. There is no offered explanation for why Terra Incognita enables them to osmose random future concepts like mohair, but they have different reactions to it. That's really the only point, aside from entertainment, that I can find in the play: the question of whether to embrace or even accept what comes. Should they root themselves in a particular year, as they eventually can? (Interesting that the first one to leave 1955 was played by an African-American in this production.)
But the fun isn't all in the screwball anachronisms. The playwright had a lot of fun with words. You need to be pretty well-educated for some of them, particularly near the beginning before their language, shall we say, devolves into modernity. One of the women keeps having to correct her own malapropisms, some of which are pretty simple (e.g., "famous" for "famished"). There are also a few time-irrelevant weirdos such as a snowball-throwing yeti and an apparent cannibal who unwittingly takes on the traits and memories of whomever he eats. Just to vary the humor, I guess, as was the reported but unseen packing of a cello at the start of the expedition.
The stage setup was especially unique. Fichandler Theater, with seats on all four sides, does tend to have more abstract scenery than the adjoining traditional Krieger Theater, which may make it better for rapid scene changes. This time, the stage was a vented diagonal strip with deep pockets on the sides. This facilitated the simulation of bridges, streams, and other straight lines to travel, and the pockets lit up with stars for nighttime. Overhead lights conveyed a whole lot, such as green designs for thick foliage.
If On the Verge is fun to watch, it must be exceedingly fun to perform, especially as the male actor. I wonder if I'll ever catch another production of it.