Eric Overmyer: Collected Plays

Eric Overmyer's plays overflow with words, and joyously so. Unrestrained by naturalism, his characters turn directly to the audience in a charged, heightened style that hangs somewhere between theater and poetry. Overmyer's work takes on a surreal, dreamlike quality that is uniquely tailored to each of the distinctive worlds he creates. In On the Verge , he sets us down in terra incognita in the company of three 19th-century female explorers who find themselves bushwhacking their way through the jungle of time, heading toward the future. En route, they encounter Cool Whip, ``I Like Ike'' buttons and the ghosts of husbands they have left behind. In The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin & Louis Chauvin , a haunting portrayal of a declining and delirious Scott Joplin, the musician cannot escape the specters of his past--a lost wife, a dead child, the fame that slipped away as the popularity of ragtime ebbed. In a Pig's Valise , his musical sendup of 1940s film noir complete with flashbacks, voiceovers and underscoring, follows private eye James Taxi, whose encounter with ethnic folk-dancer Dolores Con Leche throws him up against the notorious Bucket brothers and into the realm of stolen dreams. In print, Overmyer's plays are an entertaining and provocative read. (Oct.)