Eric Overmyer: Collected Plays
Eric Overmyer. Smith & Kraus, $14.95 (317pp) ISBN 978-1-880399-33-0
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.)
Details
Reviewed on: 06/28/1993
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 336 pages - 978-1-880399-40-8