Down in the South, we don't hear as much onstage from Eric Overmyer as they do out West, where the playwright was born and schooled, or up North, where his hip, brainy slickness is more in demand. During the Loaf Era, we've missed out on Overmyer's musical, In a Pig's Valise, and many readers may assume that he's a TV writer since his recent success with The Wire. Our only brushes with Overmyer have occurred when Charlotte Rep produced Dark Rapture in 1996, and in repeated visitations from his most enduring classic, On the Verge. You can catch the latest sighting up at The Warehouse in Cornelius through this Saturday.
We go way back with that script, naming the Charlotte Shakespeare production of Verge our Comedy of the Year in 1989. If memory serves, that '89 production featured Mitzi Corrigan as the intrepid Mary Baltimore, leader of an expedition that starts out in 1888 in search of Terra Incognita and winds up at the polar antipodes of that location, Las Vegas in 1955. Fanny Cranberry and Alexandra Cafuffle fill out the threesome, who start out as indistinguishable from one another as Charlie's Angels.
That's part of Overmyer's point as the women journey through jungle that is as exotic linguistically as it is geographically. They are all outfitted as adventurers as they embark, there's a huge peppering of rhyme and alliteration mixed in with the ladies' anthropological erudition as they converse, and their solidarity is axiomatic. Slowly, they realize that the overland dimensions of their expedition are illusory. The progressively denser jungle they're exploring is the future — and as they correctly postulate, it is slang. Colliding with modernity, the literary and academic trappings of their discourse begin to evaporate. Sojourning in 1955, Mary finally concedes Alex's point that trousers are proper for women before launching further into the future.
Wryly, Overmyer gives the ladies an optimistic, enthusiastic gusto for all of it — from "I Like Ike" buttons to motorcycles to Cool Whip. The ladies' worship of science and progress, their unquestioning acceptance and embrace of the oxymorons and non sequiturs of modern life are merely slight exaggerations of our own. Our rights of assembly and petition, after all, are overwhelmed by the onslaught of such absurdities as Burma Shave and guest host.
Unlike the New Stage Ensemble production out of Winthrop that toured the Carolinas in 1996, every man or beast encountered by the ladies is played by a single actor, and Mark Scarboro's bravura performance — encompassing a biker, a lounge lizard, a dragon lady, Mister Coffee, and more — certainly compares with Tim Ross's award-winning metamorphoses of 1989. What's surpassingly fine is the whole arena-stage setting, amazingly squeezed into the Warehouse's storefront space by director/designer Jim Gloster and set designer Ben Pierce. Parasols and modern paraphernalia (including a mighty box of Velveeta) hang from above, ready to lower into play, and a ramp leading up through the center of the house enables our explorers to repeatedly circumnavigate the audience.
Co-producing and starring as Mary, Donna Scott conveys a little less of the leader's Victorian starchiness without sacrificing an iota of her authority. As the romantic Fanny, who must literally abandon her husband to the past, Tonya Bludsworth personifies Overmyer's subtitle, the geography of yearning, nicely discarding a layer of melancholy in the arms of Nicky Paradise. Chandler McIntyre is adorable as the heretical, Kodak-toting Alex, brimful of energies and impulses.
That "I Like Ike" button is emblematic of the changes that osmose into our ladies between 1888 and 1955. No longer just a pin they can attach to their outerwear, the slogan is actually something they can act upon by voting. Pay close attention to this meticulously professional production and you'll notice that these explorers' chief discovery is themselves.
