Future shock

2nd Story's delightful On the Verge

by Bill Rodriguez

Exploring the imagination can be even more exciting than exploring physical terrain, especially if you're tagging along with a playwright as whimsical as Eric Overmeyer. The proof is all there in 2nd Story Theatre's delightful production of On the Verge, or The Geography of Yearning, directed by Jen Swain.

What's more, he's channeling the aspirations of three ur-feminists, Victorian women explorers, a most unlikely occupation in that repressive age. Whacking through the bush with their umbrellas in terra incognita, somewhere "east of Australia and west of Peru," sans porters, guides or the slightest inhibition, they are exemplars not only of feminist feistiness but human aspiration in general. Pooh-poohing obstacles in their path, from cannibal to yeti, they wend their way to modern times -- popping up in 1955 -- through a mysterious process that seems less science-fiction than psychologically right on (if you haven't felt ahead of your time lately, you're not moving fast enough).

Buoyant and inventive language propels the ladies as well as fueling our fascination, as Overmeyer glories in employing characters from an articulate age and conversations range from metaphysics to sociology. But this is a playful play even more than a thoughtful one. Mary (Kate Lester) launches into a droll monologue/monograph on "the ubiquitous manioc," a root pounded into a pestilent paste by every native culture she has encountered in the tropics and "better suited to masonry" than to cuisine. Kodak-snapping Alex (Alyn Carlson-Webster) declares she is extruded -- no, she means ecstatic; delicious -- whoops, delirious. Fanny (Marilyn Dubois in mugging mode), who once introduced croquet to headhunters (get the image?), bounces along comically, driving an automobile as her pith helmet indicates a steering wheel.

Early in their 1888 adventure, they begin encountering "flotsam from the future," first a plastic tub of Philadelphia cream cheese for the date bread one of them has baked, then a New York Times clipping from the 1972 on some president called Nixon. By the time they come across a container of Cool Whip, a taste sensation these manioc-hardened veterans all but swoon over, they realize that they have been entering future times as casually as they've stepped into new continents. If that isn't startling enough, they find unfamiliar words and phrases popping into conversations, such as Burma Shave, free love and red Chinese. They name the fascinating phenomenon "chronokinesis."

They also begin encountering an odd assortment of no less than eight men (all performed by a giddily protean Brian Monahan). The first is a cannibal they at first think is German. Actually, his accent is from the ever-switching French-German border region of Alcace Lorraine, which is where the dirigible pilot, his late lunch, was from. They also come across that yeti, and a bridge troll gets a little obnoxious about exacting a toll, but Mr. Coffee makes up for him by being suave in his top hat and white scarf. The last of the encounters is with an amiable lounge singer named Nicky Paradise. By that time, Fanny realizes that she will never get back to hubby Grover, who had her declared dead and with the 1929 stock crash leapt off a silo, so she and Nicky get together. By the end, only Mary, the oldest, wants to venture on from the comfortable, optimistic Eisenhower '50s. But she has changed enough to trade in her long skirt for the trousers that she thought scandalous at the outset.

The three women are all very funny. We could have used even more differentiation of them, though, especially of the eldest, Mary, their leader. The same goes for Monahan's entertaining multiple characters, some of whom seemed to merge into a single frolicking personality. A welcome contrast on this account was the somber Grover, Fanny's husband, who came to her in a dream and warned of the future.

Fun during intermission as well as enhancing the play was the amusing set design by Julia Bernert and John Montano. It pretty consists of random items that connote travel. Bicycle wheels and a surf board, a coolie hat and a kimono, a wire model of the Eiffel Tower.

On the Verge isn't the piece of fluff that this gloss of its amusing high points might indicate. It's more like overhearing intelligent but bemused conversation of some quaint, colorful strangers. At one point Alex observes that evil is in the world "to thicken the plot." Let's not blame Overmeyer for finding so many entertaining alternatives to that method.

On the Verge is at the Tiverton Four Corners Center for Arts &Education through August 6. Call 624-6200.