Lost in a maze of masquerade and revelry, a ratbaggy gang of exiled cavaliers plunge into the steamy depths of Naples at carnival time. I want to do something wild and high-energy. And this is a sexy, dangerous play. Its honesty about the battle between men and women for power is striking given it is over three and a half centuries old. And also, what a treat to have Toby Schmitz back at Belvoir as the Rover himself.
Warning: This production contains partial nudity, smoking, strobe effects, coarse language, adult themes and sexual references. Please contact our Box Office on 02 if you require further information. Well worth checking out. Director Eamon Flack and his flawlessly cast company of actors have found comedy just about everywhere. It is a remarkable cast, unrelenting with their extraordinary exuberance and skill.
All I ask is the privilege for my masculine part, the poet, to tread in those successful paths my [male] predecessors have so long thrived in⦠If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom, but that you will usurp all to yourselves, I lay down my quill and you shall hear no more of me. No, because I will be kinder to the brothers of the pen than they have been to a defenceless woman.
I am not content to write for money alone. I value fame as much as if I had been born a hero, and if you rob me of that, I will retire from the ungrateful world, and scorn its fickle favours. Aphra Behn.
She wrote for money because money was a better form of dependency than a husband. Her own had died or run off a few years into the marriage. This was in , six years after the severe republic of Oliver Cromwell had given way to the restoration of Charles II. Without a husband Behn was free to live by her own means, which she proceeded to do to the utmost. First she went to Antwerp to spy for the king. She wrote plays and novels, she published scandalous letters, she was commissioned to write lyrics and poetry.
