The NIU School of Theatre and Dance production of “The Lucky Chance” re-sets the 17th century Restoration comedy in 1960s London.
NIU theater professor Stanton Davis is director of the school’s production of “The Lucky Chance.” He says, as the first female professional playwright in Britain, author Aphra Behn is a fascinating figure of history. But that’s not why he chose to stage the play.
“Aphra Behn’s plays have very deep characters, and they seem to be sort of actually be motivated by something very primal and very real,” he says.
And Davis says the message those characters impart still resonates.
“The play itself is about four women who find themselves stuck with the wrong man. And they contrive -- with the help of their lovers – to right that wrong and get with the right guy. And they make no apologies about it. They actually say ‘I can’t help who I am,’ which seems to me [is] something that people are still saying today about their sexuality.”
Davis didn’t want the audience to feel distanced from the play’s story by period staging. So instead, he updated the setting to the 1960s London club scene. Not inappropriate, he says.
“Just like the Restoration, that was time of rebellion. That was a time of stylistic excess, and also a time of libertines.”
And, Davis says, that goes for the 1960s music in this production, too.
“We have enough of a relationship with it that when we hear those songs, they affect us in a way hearing that Baroque opera wouldn’t. So, you know, there’s music by Donovon, there’s music by The Yardbirds – bands that would have been listened to in the discotheques and clubs of London in 1967, 1968,” he says.
The 1960s were also the beginning of the age of celebrity as we think of it today. So Davis has laid on the reality show experience with on-stage paparazzi.
“Occasionally you actually have live feed video of the stage itself, so it’s sort of like the actor watching the character watching himself being performed,” he says.
Davis says it all works because of the play’s strong writing.
“We’d be going along working with the comedy and all of the sudden we’d run into these scenes that were just very serious. You know, a young wife with a man that she married for money because she was in a destitute way and the two of them having a very real conversation about that.”
And while there’s plenty of entertainment in the show, in the end, he wants the audience to go beyond the external trappings to embrace the play.
“I’m hoping for that spark of recognition and those moments of truth where the audience sees a bit of themselves in the characters and the situations on stage,” Davis says.
And if they think NIU’s mod production is fab? Well, that would be out of sight.
The NIU production of “The Lucky Chance” runs at DeKalb’s Huntley Middle School Feb. 25-28 and March 3-5.
