On the Verge, or the Geography of Yearning is a 1986 stage play by Eric Overmyer, best known for his work on Law & Order, The Wire, and Treme. It tells the story of three Victorian women explorers, each with their own specialty, who set off in 1888 to chart Terra Incognita, an unknown and mysterious land. Mary Baltimore is the oldest, an anthropologist whose travels are mostly in Africa. Fanny Cranberry is writing up her journey for the tabloid "True Trek"; she is the most conservative and the only married member of the party. Alexandra Cafuffle is the youngest, an aspiring lyricist whose specialty is cold terrain, especially Tibet.
They meet natives including a German-accented cannibal, a yeti, a Beat poetry-spouting Troll (all played by the same actor); and encounter new objects and vocabulary as they travel through time and space, discovering the ability to "osmose" the meaning of these new terms. Eventually they reach civilization again, having arrived back in America in 1955.
On the Verge is a celebration of feminism, language, history, and pop culture. Not to be confused with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
On the Verge contains examples of:
- Adventurer's Club: Fanny is a member of Explorer's Club, although the real one wasn't founded until 1904, and probably didn't allow women in its early days. (The play already has Time Travel, so why not, really?)
- Air Guitar: Alexandra does this in the 1950s while still in Victorian attire, to herald the coming of Rock and Roll.
- Ambiguously Gay: there's more than a few hints that Mary is a lesbian.
- Antiquated Linguistics: sometimes bordering on Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. Your program for the show may contain a glossary.
- Arc Words:
- Vaya Con Dios!
- On the Verge
- I Like Ike
- Artistic License – History:
- Hand mixers were invented in 1857, and were a century old by the 1950s. They would not be alien to Victorian gentlewomen from the 1880s.
- Cream Cheese has existed
since the 16th Century, and had been made in Philadelphia since the 1820s. As with hand mixers, they would not be alien to Victorian Gentlewomen from the 1880s.
- Badass Biker: the Troll
- Beatnik: the Gorge Troll, with a few dashes of '50s greaser and Marlon Brando
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: there's a snowball-throwing baby yeti in one scene
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: most of the scenes end in a journal entry, where one of the ladies addresses the audience and summarize or foreshadow events.
- Catchphrase: Mary: "Not annoying." Alex: "I'll follow suit."
- Coolest Club Ever: Nicky's Peligrosa Paradise Bar & Grill
- Cool Helmet: The ladies wear pith helmets, as any proper explorer should.
- Cosmic Horror Story: There are eldritch undertones to the play, how simply being in Terra Incognita and being able to see the future is able to alter their mannerisms and personalities, and the 1950s that they wind up in might be a Lotus-Eater Machine imitation of the real thing rather than the genuine Fifties.
- Dragon Lady: Madame Nhu.
- Dramatic Ring Removal: Fanny after Mr. Coffee informs her that her husband Grover had her legally declared dead, and he committed suicide some 19 years after that.
- Downer Ending: Alexandra and Fanny go native and remain in the 1950s, possibly trapped in an Eldritch Location Lotus-Eater Machine that transcends the borders of space-time (rather than being in the genuine 1950s), and Mary continues exploring Terra Incognita without them.
- Eldritch Location: Terra Incognita and its unknown mechanics of Chronokinesis.
- Family Versus Career: Fanny's long absences put a strain on her relationship with her husband Grover. There seems to be a great deal of tenderness between them, but they have very little in common.
- The '50s: Where the ladies end up. "Perhaps 1955 is the apotheosis of the future."
- Foreign Queasine: Fanny delights in it in a monologue about the Adventurer's Club, Mary declares manioc tastes "at best like the bottom of a budgie's cage", and Alex describes Tibetan cuisine as "not haute." A scene titled "Native Chop" introduces the cannibal Alphonse.
- Going Native: Alex and Fanny do this in the 1950s.
- The Ghost: President Eisenhower, who is apparently a regular customer of Nicky Paradise.
- The Hecate Sisters: Alex (maiden), Fanny (mother), Mary (crone)
- I Choose to Stay: the ultimate fate of Alex and Fanny.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Alphonse.
- The Ingenue: Alex, although she has more depth than the Stock Character and a bit of a rock and roll personality— making her a little more spirited than ingenues usually are.
- Inscrutable Oriental: Mme Nhu, and her fortune cookies.
- Jive Turkey: Gus and the Troll; Alex embraces slang.
- Lady of Adventure
- Least Rhymable Word: dirigible, dirigible, dirigible!
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The 1950s Suburbia at the end of the play has hints of this.
- Lounge Lizard: Nicky Paradise, who is a genuinely charming love interest, not a sleaze.
- Medium Awareness: The Gorge Troll remarks that he and the three gentlewomen are in a "costume drama", and there is a subsequent jab at theater.
- Plucky Girl: Alex: "high adventure and stupefying risk are my metier."
- Proper Lady: "The civilizing mission of Woman is to reduce the amount of masculinity in the world, not add to it by wearing trousers."
- Psychopomp: Mr. Coffee, who is "not exclusively of this era" and informs Fanny of Grover's death.
- Purple Prose: Gradually supplanted by '50s slang as the play progresses.
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Subverted into "Proper ladies don't wear trousers," while lampshading the Double Standard of the straight trope.
- Reference Overdosed
- Rhymes on a Dime: The Troll, occasionally Alex.
- Rock & Roll: Alex discovers this is her calling; she does Air Guitar of a tune by The Beach Boys.
- Shout-Out: There's a ton of historical allusions (including a Running Gag on who's the current President), and pop culture references to Burma-Shave, Gunsmoke, Willy and the Hand Jive and everything in between.
- Shout-Out: To Shakespeare: Alex gets the "O brave new world" line and is promptly lampshaded as a plagiarist by Fanny. Although Fanny herself quotes Hamlet in an earlier scene. Mr. Coffee paraphrases part of Portia's "quality of mercy" speech.
- Speaking Like Totally Teen: Occasionally when Fanny or Mary osmose a hip reference and don't understand it.
- Spirited Young Lady: Alex most prominently, although all the women have elements of this.
- Stylish Protection Gear: as proper Victorian ladies, they explore the jungle in dresses, petticoats, and corsets. Alex would rather wear trousers; the others will have none of that nonsense.
- There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: Mary: "There are two sorts of folks in the world. The sort you eat with, and the sort you drink with. Cannibals you drink with."
- Time Travel: Chronokinesis.
- Time-Travel Tense Trouble
- Time Travelling Lesbians: Mary, especially when the time the play was written (and Mary's time of origin) was not particularly lesbian-friendly: it may be using her visiting different periods and the various fantasy creatures in those in order to progress view of sexuality.
- Title Drop: Several times throughout the play, usually with relation to Mary. "On The Verge" is the title of the first scene; "The Geography of Yearning" is the title of the last scene.
- Title In: Every scene has a projected title, usually containing a pun (Native Chop) or a pop culture reference (In The Jungle, the Mighty Jungle).
- Verbal Tic: Alex, using unusual random words as exclamations. For example, "Ow! Ligament, juicy Nordic, quiz!"
- You Are Who You Eat: Alphonse, the cannibal who gains the language and syntax of anyone he eats as "side effect." In this case, it was a dirigible pilot from Alsace-Lorraine.
