Review: OR, at Constellation Theatre Company

Writers have a somewhat embarrassing tendency to glorify the act of writing. There are too many author protagonists to count. Liz Duffy Adams leans into this trend with a tasteful sense of irony in her 2009 play, OR. She picked an interesting subject for the task with Aphra Behn. 

Behn was a female playwright in 17th century England who has inspired multiple modern works for the stage. She was born just about 20 years after Shakespeare’s death and managed to support herself as a playwright, prose writer, and translator. Even in aristocratic circles during this period, it had become taboo to educate daughters, so it’s safe to say Behn was a radical, if perhaps not in the ways Adams imagines. Or, perhaps, in exactly those ways. Much of Behn’s history is unknown, which is part of what makes her a great subject for an artist to riff on - no one can say what she was really like. We do know she was a prolific playwright and a spy employed by King Charles II. She was also known, or at least derided, as a libertine. 

Adams fills in this sketchy background to create an Aphra Behn who is ambitious, sexually free, and morally complex. The title, OR, centers the play in push-and-pull. Adams’ Aphra Behn balances trade-offs in choices between responsibility or indulgence, loyalty or betrayal, love or ambition. Or all of the above. 

Most of the action takes place in a single night in which Aphra Behn has to complete a play for her first, and potentially last, shot at breaking into the theater. At the same time, new and old lovers demand her time and attention. Helping one could mean hurting the other, or herself. A hundred decisions and distractions fill her evening as she fights to determine what’s right. 

In true Shakespearean style, the themes of OR are deep, daunting human questions that are approached with humor and rhyme. While the dialogue is not in strict iambic pentameter, the actors maintain a similar melody and style. They occasionally drop into rhymed verse, knowingly, in conversation with each other. This gives the impression that the characters are themselves admirers of the Bard, paying homage in their language and their decisions. 

Like her characters, Adams draws on Shakespeare to inform her dialogue, content, and choice of subject matter. But what honors his legacy most is her own balancing act between humor or seriousness, and her refusal to pick one or the other. Adams turns her own “or” into an “and” in the same fashion as her characters do. She celebrates the past and the future, love and ambition, and overall she gives the impression that she had fun writing OR, which adds to rather than detracts from its gravity as a work of art. 

In Constellation Theater’s production, the actors, too, nail this same balancing act. They execute expertly on both comedic and dramatic timing. There are only three people in the cast. Veronica del Cerro remains Aphra Behn while Michael Kevin Darnall and Irene Hamilton take on three roles each, including lightning-quick costume changes, without missing a beat. All of them give stellar performances even with the added difficulty of performing approximately 14 inches from the front row. One might say they understood the assignment. 

It’s rare to see a show that does so much, and in only 90 minutes start to finish. Perhaps best of all, OR starts and ends with a realistic optimism about the balancing act we all have to play as humans. It’s a reminder to question the choices the world presents as either/or and to find a way to both/and, without denying that there are inevitable trade-offs and real distinctions between right and wrong, at least sometimes.

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