Constellation Theatre Company's "Or," Delivers a Witty Romp Through Restoration England at Atlas Performing Arts Center
Constellation Theatre Company has settled into its home at the Atlas Performing Arts Center with a deliriously fun production of Liz Duffy Adams' "Or," a fast-paced Restoration-style farce that runs through June 7, 2026. Directed by Constellation's Founding Artistic Director Allison Arkell Stockman, the play imagines a single chaotic night in the life of Aphra Behn, the 17th-century spy turned poet who became the first Englishwoman to make her living as a professional playwright.
The story finds Behn in a London lodging house, racing to finish a play on deadline while a parade of complications crashes through her door. King Charles II, who is keeping her as both patron and lover, drops in for a passionate visit. The Restoration stage actress Nell Gwynne arrives and quickly stirs up a romance of her own with Aphra. Then William Scot, an exiled ex-lover with knowledge of a plot to assassinate the king, turns up looking for refuge and a tryst. Add a sullen serving woman, an imposing theater manager who could change Aphra's fortunes, and a writing deadline that will not wait, and the result is a night of slamming doors, hidden lovers stuffed into armoires, hasty costume changes, and quick-witted entanglements that all somehow have to be resolved before dawn. Beneath the romp lies a sharply observed story about the grit, wit, and ambition required of a woman artist trying to survive in a world built by and for men, threaded throughout with Aphra's memorable aphorisms about love, freedom, and the realities of being a woman with a vocation.
What has thrilled audiences and critics alike is just how completely the production commits to the play's blend of bawdy farce and feminist conviction. Veronica del Cerro anchors the show with commanding grace, playing Aphra with verve, drive, and a tenderness that makes her ability to enchant even royalty entirely believable. Around her, Michael Kevin Darnall and Irene Hamilton are getting raves for their virtuosic role-juggling. Darnall takes on three wildly different parts (a preening King Charles, a swaggering William Scot, and a scene-stealing turn in dowager drag as theater manager Lady Davenant) while Hamilton swings from a charmingly gamine, libidinous Nell Gwynne to a deliciously dull serving woman, with a stop along the way as Aphra's jailer. The role-playing within the role-playing is one of the production's purest pleasures.
Stockman's direction has been called effervescent, and the staging keeps the comedy moving at a lightning clip without losing the play's heart. The wordless mime interludes set to music (cleverly designed to cover what must be frantic offstage costume swaps) have emerged as some of the most delightful moments of the evening. The design work has earned consistent praise across the board: Tiffani I. Sydnor's quaint wood-and-brick scenic design, Danielle Preston's glorious period costumes, Ben Harvey's atmospheric lighting, Sarah O'Halloran's lilting Renaissance-inflected sound design, and Sierra Young's intimacy direction, which keeps a play full of kissing, bedroom near-misses, and libertine energy grounded in a refreshingly modern ethic of consent. Mark Jaster's movement work ties the whole physical comedy together.
What ultimately lingers is the play's optimistic, generous vision: a celebration of art, friendship, sexual freedom, and a woman determined not to let love (or men, or money, or anything else) stop her from doing the work she was put on earth to do. Running approximately one hour and 40 minutes with no intermission, "Or," is a sumptuous, ribald, big-hearted night at the theater that confirms Constellation's reputation for telling big stories in intimate spaces.
"Or," plays through June 7, 2026, at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC.