Time-traveling comedy ‘On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning)’ presented by PAD

“I have seen the future, and it is slang.”

So proclaims Fanny, one of three female Victorian adventurers at the center of Eric Overmyer’s kaleidoscopic comedy “On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning).”

Equipped with dialogue as pithy as their helmets, this fearless trio journeys across time, space and history, trekking from highest Himalaya to deepest Africa to suburban-est suburbia.

Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present “On The Verge” Feb. 19-28 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. Performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 19 and 20; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21. Performances continue the following weekend at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 26 and 27; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28.

The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. Tickets are $15, or $10 for students, seniors and Washington University faculty and staff, and are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office and all MetroTix outlets.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

“On the Verge”

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services

(From left) Ginny Page, Matt Rosenthal, Catherine Morton and Renae Adams. Download high-res image.

“There is a substantial body of literature about the actual Victorian trekkers,” says Andrea Urice, senior lecturer in the PAD, who directs the cast of four. “Throughout the 19th century, English and some American women climbed mountains and traveled the world in corsets and petticoats. They were really quite remarkable.”

“On The Verge” opens in 1888, as the three adventurers — Fanny along with Mary and Alexandra — make landfall “somewhere east of Australia and west of Peru.” Refusing Sherpas, bearers or other native guides, they brave the hills and jungles of “Terra Incognita” with only the most essential items, including machetes, rope, umbrellas, butterfly nets, watercolors, peacock feathers, lemon drops and a rhinestone tiara for official meetings with local poobahs.

Soon, the trio begins to discover increasingly mysterious artifacts: a rotary eggbeater; an Eisenhower campaign button; a press clipping of Richard Nixon, whom they initially suspect of being an orangutan. Meanwhile, through a kind of temporal osmosis, their own vocabularies begin to fill with strange and unfamiliar phrases such as “Mrs. Butterworth” and “rock ‘n’ roll.”

“These are very smart, educated women, and Overmyer has a lot of fun with their dialogue,” Urice says. “The language is very clever, very precise and very complicated. It has an almost Monty Python-like sense of humor.

“Eventually the women realize that they’re moving through time as well as through space, arriving in 1955,” Urice says. “So their discoveries are not simply the geographical or anthropological discoveries of real Victorian trekkers, but instead represent a kind of historical and cultural awareness.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services

(From left) Matt Rosenthal, Catherine Morton, Ginny Page and Renae Adams. Download high-res image.

“At the same time, though they’ve progressed 67 years, and a lot of things have changed, 1888 and 1955 are both periods with very specific expectations of women,” Urice says — expectations that Overmyer’s three heroines continually defy. Nevertheless, “as they move through the play, all three women discover new things about themselves and undergo some profound personal transformations.

“In the end, ‘On The Verge’ is about the human impulse to go forward, to continue, to progress into the unknown,” Urice says. “What else can we learn? What else can we find? What else can we do?”

Cast and crew

The cast is led by senior Ginny Page as Mary, a trained anthropologist and the eldest of the trekkers. Senior Catherine Morton stars as Fanny, a traditionalist who meets the future with skepticism, while sophomore Renae Adams is Alexandra, the youngest and most exuberantly progressive of the group.

Rounding out the cast is junior Matt Rosenthal, who plays eight characters. These range from a Yeti and a casino boss to Mr. Coffee and a cannibal who speaks in the voice of his latest meal, a German dirigible pilot.

Set designs are by Angela Bengford, lecturer in the PAD. Costumes are by senior Laura Mart. Lighting and sound are by junior Scott Griffith and senior Ben Walsh, respectively.