LOGAN – The final production of the 2024-25 season by the Theatre Arts Department at Utah State University will also be the swansong for two of the department’s gifted young performers.
Set to take their final bows during the upcoming production of Or, a historical farce by playwright Liz Duffy Adams, are USU veterans Mia Gatherum and Marin Robison.
That talented duo will be missed by local audiences when they move onto greener theatrical pastures following graduation this spring.
Having debuted to critical acclaim in 2009, Ms. Adams’ play is a bawdy romp about sex, love and gender roles that makes its setting in the 1600s look a lot like the 1960s – and also akin to our current brouhaha about Woke pronouns, for that matter.
Or, takes place in a single night when Aphra Behn – a real-life Restoration Era poet, former spy and aspiring playwright – is desperately laboring over her first manuscript. But she is constantly being interrupted by current and former lovers, including actress Nell Gwynne, King Charles II and would-be assassin William Scott.
Somehow, Aphra must save the life of Charles, win a pardon for William, resist Nell’s charms and launch her career all in one night.
In the upcoming USU production, Ms. Gatherum will appear as Aphra Behn. She has previously been cast in numerous university offerings, most recently in Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson and Between the Lines earlier this year and in the hilarious Hay Fever with the Lyric Repertory Company in the summer of 2024.
Portraying Nell Gwynne and other female characters in Or, will be Ms. Robison. She has been a cast stand-out in USU productions of The Tempest, Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson and Between the Lines, as well as the Lyric Rep offerings of The Marvelous Wonderettes, Sh-Boom! Life Could Be a Dream and Hay Fever.
The final member of the tiny cast of Or, will be Jonah Newton, a third-year student in the USU Theatre Arts program. Fresh from a challenging performance in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Newton is set to play the restored Stuart monarch and William Scott.
The three-person comedy is slated to be staged in the Black Box Theatre of the Chase Fine Arts Center on the USU campus from April 11 through April 19.
University officials are warning theater-goers that Or, features mature content equivalent to a R movie rating and also that the Black Box Theatre has limited seating.