Playwright: Liz Duffy Adams. At: Caffeine Theatre at Collaboraction's space in the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1575 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: 312-409-4778; $20. Runs through: Dec. 4
You've got to admire the pluck of storefront theater companies that produce shows in the tiniest of spaces—particularly when they have limited resources to stage a play calling for a certain amount of historical period lushness.
Liz Duffy Adams' 2009 comic farce Or,—now receiving its Chicago debut courtesy of Caffeine Theatre in Wicker Park—is a historical feminist fantasy set during English Restoration.
Under director Catherine Weidner, Caffeine Theatre makes a very assured and fun stab at Or, although they're slightly undermined by the material. It's not so much the historical accoutrements dictated in the play, but the speedy farcical production demands of believable multiple characters popping in and out of slammed doors.
Or, imagines the life of real-life spy-turned-playwright Aphra Behn, who was not only one of the first English women to make a successful living as a writer, but who was also a historical advocate for same-sex relationships. In Or, Adams plays fast and loose with the facts by showing Behn helping to thwart an assassination plot while scrambling to finish writing a play before deadline (and by suggesting she was both a lover to King Charles II and famous actress Nell Gwynne).
One wise move by director Weidner is to play up the silly theatricality of the material by allowing the audience peeks of the actors in their pre-show routines and by throwing in a few anachronistic touches (like the Strauss waltz that accompanies the choreographed scene change and the movie-poster display case that hangs off to the right).
Unfortunately, the play's quick-change character demands are just beyond reach of the cast. Oh sure, Kay Kron and Edward Karch vigorously throw themselves at their multiple roles ranging from strutting monarchs to lowly servants, but their British accents don't always consistently match up to the classes of people they're supposed to portray. (They also need to bring more of a differentiated physicality to the many characters they depict.)
I would have also liked more desperation from the Behn of Megan Kohl. The stakes are insanely increased for Behn in Or, but Kohl's performance is so level-headed and in-control that you rarely worry that she won't find some way of negotiating herself out of one sticky situation or another.
Although far from perfect, Caffeine Theatre's Or, is still plenty of fun. Though the happy ending stressing the historical artistic standing of Aphra Behn in English culture can be debated, Behn is still very admirable for finding so much success as a woman in such a male-dominated society of the time.
