An ambitious "Empress of the Moon" at Adrienne Theatre
Aphra Behn: a name from the past (my past, graduate school; her past, 17th century). Empress of the Moon, by Chris Braak, is a pseudo-biodrama about Behn's life, a bold experiment by Special Operations Executive, the experimental wing of Iron Age Theatre, at the Adrienne Theatre.
Aphra Behn: a name from the past (my past, graduate school; her past, 17th century).
Empress of the Moon,
by Chris Braak, is a pseudo-biodrama about Behn's life, a bold experiment by Special Operations Executive, the experimental wing of Iron Age Theatre, at the Adrienne Theatre.
Behn was among the first women to earn a living as a writer in English. That's one of the two facts anybody knows about her; the other is that she spied for the English crown. Well, probably (a phrase that could be appended to many aspects of her life). She was about 20 in 1658 when Cromwell's puritanical rule ended, the monarchy was restored, and the theaters reopened.
Behn's works are very witty, very naughty, and, although Braak's Empress of the Moon is less so on both counts, there is much of interest here theatrically. The last of Behn's plays to be produced in her lifetime was a farce called The Emperor of the Moon, thus this title.
The cast of six women enter, wearing masks; they will play a variety of characters, switching identities, genders, masks, and jackets. These versatile actors are Jacqueline Holloway (a standout), Casey Conan, JaQuinley Kerr, Jennifer Ann Hutten, Laura McWater, and Lauren Kerstetter.
The style here is part Restoration comedy, part commedia dell'arte. The conceit is to have everybody - cast, characters, 17th-century author and 21st-century author - doubling each other.
Premise: "Everyone needs tragedy . . . [otherwise] you'd just be living in a play."
Prologue: Behn claims the right to "narrative predestination," i.e., authorial power to manipulate characters. How this works in an autobiography is part of the charm.
Action: lots of sword-fighting and declaiming about pervy sexual fantasies and highly stylized carryings-on.
Exultant feminist finale: "The world is ours, but only if we seize it."
Playwright Braak needed to be edited by somebody other than Director Braak; too much dramatically unnecessary material that is too hard to follow is stuffed into too many scenes. Even for one who knows (sort of) Behn's 1688 novel Oroonoko - and can see Empress switch from it to the plot and characters of her play The Rover - it's possible to get mixed up.
But Empress of the Moon is an impressive and ambitious project, calling to mind Behn's own Prologue to The Emperor of the Moon: "Long and at vast expense, the industrious stage / Has strove to please a dull ungrateful age."
Count me among the grateful for this arcane and interesting theatrical event.
Empress of the Moon
Presented by Special Operations Executive of Iron Age Theatre at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., through Sunday. Tickets $15. Information: www.iatsoe.org.EndText