Devoted students of the American theater will be thrilled to see The Verge a great deal more than other playgoers because Susan Glaspell’s drama is one of those tantalizing titles from the theatrical past we rarely, if ever, see performed. Thank you, then, to the Public Theater for presenting Fiasco Theater’s revival of The Verge, which opened Thursday for a brief visit.
Let’s not belch much about Glaspell, a remarkable Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist; her list of plays and novels; her place in history as a co-founder of the Provincetown Players; and as the woman who discovered Eugene O’Neill. Anybody reading this probably knows all that. To the play, then. Produced at the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street for a month-long run in 1921, The Verge confounded critics – Alexander Woollcott called it “tormented and bewildering” – but their bemused response won the drama a niche in theater annals as an experimental work about an unconventional soul.
The Verge delivers a purposefully abstract portrait of Claire Archer (Miriam Silverman), an intense, highly spirited woman from a distinguished American family, now in her attractive middle age. Evidently wealthy, Claire occupies herself as an amateur horticulturist whose experiments in creating unusual new plants symbolize her rebellious desire to forge fresh ways of living. “We need not be held in forms molded for us,” Claire assets, although for all of her poetical talk – and she talks plenty – the woman is unable to articulate her ineffable desire for “outness” and “otherness.”
This shamelessly self-centered protagonist is the absent mother of Elizabeth (Amara Leonard), reared into a vapid debutante by Claire’s ultra conventional sister Adelaide (Emily Young). Buzzing around Claire during a fateful 24 hours at home are three men: Harry (Noah Brody) is her devoted though Babbitt-y second husband. Demming (Devin E. Haqq) is an artist and her current lover, although Harry doesn’t know it yet. Edgeworthy (Paco Tolson), a well-to-do vagabond mystic, has been her spiritual soulmate since their youth. While Claire desperately aspires for breakthroughs in genetics, social mores, and also within herself, others fear she is on the verge of a mental breakdown, and they bring in a nerve specialist (Paul L. Coffey).
Staging the three-act play with one intermission, director Jessie Austrian provides a handsome production while moving along its action at a steady pace. Lawrence E. Moten III, the scenic designer, makes elegant use of Lu Esther Hall’s own Victorian architecture by incorporating its arches into an airy depiction of Claire’s spacious greenhouse, garnished in nifty detail by props director Caitlyn Murphy. Lighting designer Amith Chandrashaker keeps the actors bright against moodier backgrounds.
Driving the story is the restless figure of Claire, obviously a rebel female because she has been dressed in slacks by designer Sarita P. Fellows, whose 1921 fashions don’t quite look lived in by the actors. Nor does a three-piece brown businessman suit with a gold watch chain suggest Demming, the boyfriend, is any kind of an artist, but then neither does Devin E. Haqq’s genial performance. Paco Tolson’s rather stolid Edgeworthy could act more spiritedly as the soulmate. A dapper Noah Brody delivers a funny depiction of Harry, the dashing trophy husband whose blunt concern for Claire (“Your nerves are a little on the blink”) only makes her mad. Amara Leonard raises chuckles as the nice, clueless daughter who terms everything “awfully amusing.”
Claire’s complex, difficult character – willful, impulsive, and obviously feeling superior to everybody else in spite of her self-doubts – benefits from the vitality of Miriam Silverman’s engaging depiction of a mostly unhappy woman. During the opening act, Silverman’s wry, bright-eyed manner recalls Irene Dunne in screwball comedy mode. As Claire becomes ever more tangled in contradicting feelings, Silverman’s darkening performance believably rides the waves of the character’s frustration with the world around her.
A philosophical comedy with a tragic conclusion, The Verge studies an iconoclast whose anxiety provokes bouts of destructive behavior. Ultimately the verbose, symbol-coded play scarcely proves to be a lost masterpiece, but offers great interest to scholars of course, and it’s a little late in the day anyway to criticize Glaspell’s dramaturgy. Personally speaking, it was a pleasure to finally make this play’s edgy acquaintance.
The Verge opened November 5, 2026, at the Public Theater and runs through November 22. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
