| . | 11/15/2009
Or,
By: Victor Gluck
Andy Paris and Maggie Siff in a scene from Or,
(Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
“It’s a new golden age, babe. … Peace, love and happiness. …Tune in and turn on, just like this.” A new play about mod London in the swinging sixties? Yes, but Liz Duffy Adams’ Or, is a new restoration comedy set in the late 1660’s which (like the 1960’s) was a free-wheeling time with the theaters reopening and women on the stage for the first time and a new king on the throne. A girl could have a really good time.
Adams has based her plot on events in the tumultuous life of Aphra Behn, the first woman professional writer, who had also been a professional spy for Charles II. In the late 1660’s Aphra was trying to pay her debts, get out of the spy game and become a playwright in the ribald, racy court of the restored monarchy. This world premiere production at the Women’s Project is light, clever and fun but also heavy, serious and taxing.
Part of the problem is that Adams can not decide what kind of play she is writing. It is by turns a restoration comedy, a classic bedroom farce, a biographical play, a satiric parody, an historical drama, and a play of language. It requires some knowledge of London in the Restoration and the career of Aphra Behn as both a spy and an author. Scenes vary from rhymed couplets to blank verse to regular prose and back again. This is for erudite and esoteric tastes. Some will be in seventh heaven; others will not know what to make of it.
The play is equally demanding of the performers. Between the three actors, they play seven roles. Kelly Hutchinson impersonates actress Nell Gywnne, leading light of the Restoration Theater, as well as Aphra’s maid Maria, and in the prologue, the jailor while Aphra is in debtor’s prison. Andy Paris plays lusty King Charles II, as well as master-counter-spy William Scott, and Lady Davenant (in drag) who had inherited the Duke’s Theater Company from her late husband. Maggie Siff, best-known for her roles as Rachel Menken in AMC’s Mad Men and Tara Knowles in FX’s Sons of Anarchy plays Aphra who must be all things to both men and women.
The title is explained by Hutchinson in the Prologue, warning us that the play will concern an “array of seeming opposites: Spy or poetess, actress or whore/ Male or female, straight or gay.” However, like the title, much of the play is too precious. Characters hide in closets and in bedrooms, just missing each other by seconds, trade witticisms, finish each other’s lines, flirt shamelessly, and make immodest proposals. Aside from Siff, the other actors appear as at least two characters each, making quick changes of costumes and wigs, or appearing in a state of undress. If only director Wendy McClellan had staged the play as all out farce – but then the elaborate dialogue and the historical references would probably have been lost.
The bulk of the play concerns one night in a London lodging house when Aphra wishes to finish her first play on assignment from the Duke’s Company which is due at nine o’clock the next morning. She is interrupted by the ravishing Nell who wishes to make her acquaintance and swings both ways, Charles II who wants Aphra for his mistress, counterspy William Scott on the run from the authorities, and Lady Davenant appears to remind the novice playwright of her deadline. Red-headed Hutchinson makes a delightfully sexy and vivacious Nell, while Paris demonstrates versatility and agility going out one door as William and reappearing as Charles a moment later at another.
Another problem with the play and the production is that Siff’s Aphra isn’t very interesting, although the other characters on stage are fascinated by her. Siff is rather dour and unbending as this worldly woman who is able to trade wit with both the king and the leading actress of her day and fascinate them both. Unfortunately, she lacks the sparkle necessary to be convincing as this remarkable chameleon of a woman. Zane Pihlstrom’s setting for Aphra’s lodgings suggests mod London with its psychedelic wallpaper, while Andrea Lauer’s costumes ground the play in the 17th century.
Liz Duffy Adams’ Or, is an ambitious attempt to write a restoration comedy with resonance for the 1960’s. At the same time erudite and amusing, witty and earth-bound, didactic and airy, the play will not be for all tastes. This is specialized theater for sophisticated tastes.
Or, (through November 22)
The Women’s Project at the Julia Miles Theater, 424 W. 55th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com
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