Aphra Behn's The Rover returns to the RSC for the 30th anniversary of The Swan.
What’s On caught up with the show’s director and leading lady to find out more...
In the late 1660s, in the midst of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a young woman returned home to England from a stint as a spy in Antwerp, only to be denied payment for her work by King Charles II. As with much of what we know of the period, the details of Aphra Behn's colourful life are sketchy, but it was around this time, crippled by debt and seeking a new source of income, that she began to write her first plays. Behn would go on to become perhaps the country's first professional female playwright, achieving commercial success in the 1670s with her carnival comedy The Rover.
Thirty years after the play was staged as part of The Swan Theatre's opening season, the RSC now presents a new version of the work, directed by Loveday Ingram and starring Alexandra Gilbreath.
“The Rover is an incredibly exciting adventure story of three young girls trying to escape the tyrannical intentions of their father and brother, set against the backdrop of the Carnival in 1670,” Ingram explains. “When I first encountered the play about 15 years ago, I'd never heard of Aphra Behn, and when I read it, I was intrigued that a woman had written such a wild, funny play over 300 years ago that I didn't even know about.”
Although Behn's work was well known in her own time and continued to be popular in the years immediately following her death, by the late 1700s, her plays had slipped massively out of favour, and were barely performed again until well into the 20th century.
“I think it may be to do with the fact that her personal life was so shocking and notorious,” Ingram suggests. “She lived an exciting, dangerous life on the edge, and she pushed boundaries and did things that other women wouldn't. Not only was she a spy and arrested for debt, but she also had love affairs with various men and women, and although she called herself Mrs Behn, there's little evidence that she was actually married. So she may have been deliberately forgotten to discourage later generations of young women from falling into lives of debauchery and excess.”
Behn wasn't only a playwright: her erotic poems, many referring explicitly to female lovers, made her something of a hero to Virginia Woolf, and have seen her dubbed ‘The English Sappho’ by some. Back when the medium was just starting to take shape, she also wrote novels, including Oroonoko, the story of an African prince tricked into slavery by British colonists, which was adapted for the stage by Biyi Bandele and directed by Gregory Doran at The Other Place in 1999.
The rover of her most famous play's title refers to a wandering naval captain called Willmore, enjoying a hedonistic break at the Neapolitan Carnival. There, he becomes embroiled in a complicated love triangle with a young woman called Hellena, looking to gain worldly experience before her brother sends her to a convent, and the famous courtesan, Angellica Bianca, played in this production by RSC Associate Artist Alexandra Gilbreath.
“Angellica is a very high-class courtesan who has previously been the mistress of a Spanish general who passed away a number of years ago, so she's on the look-out for another wealthy benefactor. Hers is a very sad story: she really falls in love with the rover and it's like an awakening for her, even though he's very much a 'wherever I lay my hat' sort of character. Since we've been rehearsing it, I've been surprised by its emotional depth - it's like doing Rattigan. There's a moment in one scene where she's almost like Hester in The Deep Blue Sea - she's in love with someone who can't possibly love her back in the same way.”
Though the play is superficially a comedy, there's a troubling undercurrent running through it that’s already surfaced in the rehearsal process.
“I've tried to bring a sense of the Restoration world the play is set in to the rehearsal room. We were working on one of the final scenes of the play last week where Florinda, one of the sisters, finds herself in a very awkward situation with a group of men who are drunk and a little out of control. They start drawing lots to see who wins her, and her brother does. We stopped the rehearsal at that point, thinking it was going somewhere very dark and that couldn't be what was intended, but I got out Samuel Pepys' diary, and read some of the poems and articles that were written around the time, and straight away you see that this really is the world you're dealing with - it's really filthy and quite shocking in its treatment of women.”
Things may have changed a great deal since Behn's day, though there are still ways in which her work continues to break the mould even today.
“Angellica is an older courtesan,” says Gilbreath, who’s performing the role. “It's lovely to be able to play a part like this because oftentimes, as soon as you hit your 40s, you're sidelined overnight. I also love the fact that when you sit in the rehearsal room there are 10 women, 10 men and lots of interesting roles amongst them, so there's a really meaningful equality there. Having now been at the RSC for nearly 25 years, I can say that most of the time, it's more like three women and 15 men.”
Following the recent refurbishment of the Swan, the production joins Two Noble Kinsmen in a season celebrating the theatre's 30th anniversary by returning to the two plays that began its journey in 1986. While Ingram hasn't sought to draw directly on the last RSC staging (The Rover hasn't been performed by the company since then), there are some interesting links between the two.
“I worked for a while as a research assistant to John Barton, who directed the 1986 production,” says Ingram. “And one of our actors, Patrick Robinson, who’s playing Belville, one of the main characters, previously played one of the smaller characters, Biskey - so we do have a link to the rehearsal room 30 years ago. But to be honest, I don't know a huge amount about that production. I’ve spoken to John, but we've talked more about the power and the joy of the play than about what he did with it. I'd have loved to have seen Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack doing it. They're both extraordinary, wonderful actors, but I can only imagine.”
Ingram's take on the play sees it relocated from the Neapolitan Carnival of the original text to the vibrant world of South America.
“We’re basing it in a kind of reinvented 17th century world, where the Spanish were imperial rulers not just in Naples but also in Buenos Aires and Havana and other South American city-states. Essentially, we've taken all the ingredients that make up the play - the Carnival, the Catholicism, Spanish colonial rule, the excessiveness, the wonderful, multicultural, dangerous city - and we've created our own version of it. It's very exciting to bring it to life - it should feel hot, steamy and sexy in a way that's not necessarily English, I hope.”
Helping to develop this exotic atmosphere is composer Grant Olding, who recently worked on Don Quixote at the RSC, as well as writing the music for the West End production of One Man, Two Guv'nors.
“Anyone who's seen either of them will know how clever he is. It's exciting, engaging, thrilling music that either makes you want to get up, sing and join in or get up and dance. But there are also bits that are very moving and poignant. It's beautiful and very Latin American-inspired - he'll be taking us on a huge journey through the music.”
The Rover is at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from Thurs 8 September 2016 until Sat 11 February 2017
Aphra Behn's The Rover returns to the RSC for the 30th anniversary of The Swan.
What’s On caught up with the show’s director and leading lady to find out more...
In the late 1660s, in the midst of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a young woman returned home to England from a stint as a spy in Antwerp, only to be denied payment for her work by King Charles II. As with much of what we know of the period, the details of Aphra Behn's colourful life are sketchy, but it was around this time, crippled by debt and seeking a new source of income, that she began to write her first plays. Behn would go on to become perhaps the country's first professional female playwright, achieving commercial success in the 1670s with her carnival comedy The Rover.
Thirty years after the play was staged as part of The Swan Theatre's opening season, the RSC now presents a new version of the work, directed by Loveday Ingram and starring Alexandra Gilbreath.
“The Rover is an incredibly exciting adventure story of three young girls trying to escape the tyrannical intentions of their father and brother, set against the backdrop of the Carnival in 1670,” Ingram explains. “When I first encountered the play about 15 years ago, I'd never heard of Aphra Behn, and when I read it, I was intrigued that a woman had written such a wild, funny play over 300 years ago that I didn't even know about.”
Although Behn's work was well known in her own time and continued to be popular in the years immediately following her death, by the late 1700s, her plays had slipped massively out of favour, and were barely performed again until well into the 20th century.
“I think it may be to do with the fact that her personal life was so shocking and notorious,” Ingram suggests. “She lived an exciting, dangerous life on the edge, and she pushed boundaries and did things that other women wouldn't. Not only was she a spy and arrested for debt, but she also had love affairs with various men and women, and although she called herself Mrs Behn, there's little evidence that she was actually married. So she may have been deliberately forgotten to discourage later generations of young women from falling into lives of debauchery and excess.”
Behn wasn't only a playwright: her erotic poems, many referring explicitly to female lovers, made her something of a hero to Virginia Woolf, and have seen her dubbed ‘The English Sappho’ by some. Back when the medium was just starting to take shape, she also wrote novels, including Oroonoko, the story of an African prince tricked into slavery by British colonists, which was adapted for the stage by Biyi Bandele and directed by Gregory Doran at The Other Place in 1999.
The rover of her most famous play's title refers to a wandering naval captain called Willmore, enjoying a hedonistic break at the Neapolitan Carnival. There, he becomes embroiled in a complicated love triangle with a young woman called Hellena, looking to gain worldly experience before her brother sends her to a convent, and the famous courtesan, Angellica Bianca, played in this production by RSC Associate Artist Alexandra Gilbreath.
“Angellica is a very high-class courtesan who has previously been the mistress of a Spanish general who passed away a number of years ago, so she's on the look-out for another wealthy benefactor. Hers is a very sad story: she really falls in love with the rover and it's like an awakening for her, even though he's very much a 'wherever I lay my hat' sort of character. Since we've been rehearsing it, I've been surprised by its emotional depth - it's like doing Rattigan. There's a moment in one scene where she's almost like Hester in The Deep Blue Sea - she's in love with someone who can't possibly love her back in the same way.”
Though the play is superficially a comedy, there's a troubling undercurrent running through it that’s already surfaced in the rehearsal process.
“I've tried to bring a sense of the Restoration world the play is set in to the rehearsal room. We were working on one of the final scenes of the play last week where Florinda, one of the sisters, finds herself in a very awkward situation with a group of men who are drunk and a little out of control. They start drawing lots to see who wins her, and her brother does. We stopped the rehearsal at that point, thinking it was going somewhere very dark and that couldn't be what was intended, but I got out Samuel Pepys' diary, and read some of the poems and articles that were written around the time, and straight away you see that this really is the world you're dealing with - it's really filthy and quite shocking in its treatment of women.”
Things may have changed a great deal since Behn's day, though there are still ways in which her work continues to break the mould even today.
“Angellica is an older courtesan,” says Gilbreath, who’s performing the role. “It's lovely to be able to play a part like this because oftentimes, as soon as you hit your 40s, you're sidelined overnight. I also love the fact that when you sit in the rehearsal room there are 10 women, 10 men and lots of interesting roles amongst them, so there's a really meaningful equality there. Having now been at the RSC for nearly 25 years, I can say that most of the time, it's more like three women and 15 men.”
Following the recent refurbishment of the Swan, the production joins Two Noble Kinsmen in a season celebrating the theatre's 30th anniversary by returning to the two plays that began its journey in 1986. While Ingram hasn't sought to draw directly on the last RSC staging (The Rover hasn't been performed by the company since then), there are some interesting links between the two.
“I worked for a while as a research assistant to John Barton, who directed the 1986 production,” says Ingram. “And one of our actors, Patrick Robinson, who’s playing Belville, one of the main characters, previously played one of the smaller characters, Biskey - so we do have a link to the rehearsal room 30 years ago. But to be honest, I don't know a huge amount about that production. I’ve spoken to John, but we've talked more about the power and the joy of the play than about what he did with it. I'd have loved to have seen Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack doing it. They're both extraordinary, wonderful actors, but I can only imagine.”
Ingram's take on the play sees it relocated from the Neapolitan Carnival of the original text to the vibrant world of South America.
“We’re basing it in a kind of reinvented 17th century world, where the Spanish were imperial rulers not just in Naples but also in Buenos Aires and Havana and other South American city-states. Essentially, we've taken all the ingredients that make up the play - the Carnival, the Catholicism, Spanish colonial rule, the excessiveness, the wonderful, multicultural, dangerous city - and we've created our own version of it. It's very exciting to bring it to life - it should feel hot, steamy and sexy in a way that's not necessarily English, I hope.”
Helping to develop this exotic atmosphere is composer Grant Olding, who recently worked on Don Quixote at the RSC, as well as writing the music for the West End production of One Man, Two Guv'nors.
“Anyone who's seen either of them will know how clever he is. It's exciting, engaging, thrilling music that either makes you want to get up, sing and join in or get up and dance. But there are also bits that are very moving and poignant. It's beautiful and very Latin American-inspired - he'll be taking us on a huge journey through the music.”
The Rover is at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from Thurs 8 September 2016 until Sat 11 February 2017