The Fiasco Theater troupe has made its name with delightfully stripped down productions of everything from familiar musical hits (Into the Woods) to relatively minor classics (Shakespeare’s Cymbeline). The company’s latest revival, now playing at the Public Theater, is a century-old drama by Susan Glaspell, a contemporary of Eugene O’Neill who co-founded the Provincetown Players that staged O’Neill’s first play. The Verge is a talky character study of a woman whose unrepentant individualism defies social conventions not just of the 1920s but of the 2020s as well.
Claire Archer (Miriam Silverman) is a well-to-do woman living on a luxurious estate where she spends most of her time in a greenhouse/conservatory with a sycophantic assistant (Paul L. Coffey). She shuns the domestic duties of a typical Victorian woman for a dogged pursuit of advancement in the field of botany, an Edge Vine that will defy conventional restraints and a new flower she’s dubbed Breath of Life “that is outside what flowers have been,” and imbued with a fragrance called Reminiscence.
Her obsession with forging her own path frustrates her more tradition-bound husband, Harry (Noah Brody), her not-so-secret lover, Dick (Devin E. Haqq), and her fawning, would-be intellectual soulmate, Tom (Paco Tolson). But while Claire cannot always articulate her desires, launching into appropriately florid and metaphor-heavy speeches, she instinctively knows that she needs to reject the entreaties of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who stands in her way.
Her defiance extends not only to her sister (Emily Young) but her own daughter (Amara Leonard), who pleads with her mom to let her assist on her flower project (“I just would have been so glad to — to share the thing that interests you”) but for motives that Claire deems insufficiently virtuous. She’s one stubborn woman.
You can see why The Verge was considered radical in its day, an unusual blend of expressionism, philosophy, and comedy centering on a strident feminist who holds herself at a distance not only from societal norms for women but from friends and family. Silverman captures Claire’s intelligence, single-mindedness, and prickliness. But there’s only so much this gifted actress can do to flesh out a woman who continually resists both our understanding and our sympathy — and who never stumbles upon an epiphany that alters her stubborn course. Perhaps that’s the point, to critique the inflexibility of certain pioneers so committed to charting their own path that they must inevitably end up isolated and on their own. But that’s a rather retrograde message, even for 1921.
You can see why the play is so seldom performed. This is a problematic show with all-too-rare flashes of genius and ahead-of-its-time perspectives. Despite some intermittently funny moments of farcical humor, which director Jessie Austrian stages effectively on the Lawence E. Moten III’s simple period set, there’s a lot of antiquated speechifying that makes The Verge a very long and rather dull sit. ★★☆☆☆
THE VERGE
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 22 for $99