THE ROVER
Best of all, it’s by a woman. The first European woman known to have made her living as a writer.
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An artistic director would have to be crazy not to consider producing a play that combines the classy sheen of something old, droll, and British with the contemporary hook of feminism–especially when the feminism is so unforced. Behn’s writing exudes a jaunty, one-of-the-boys nonchalance even as it’s ripping the boys to shreds for the jaunty nonchalance with which they tyrannize women.
Then there’s Blunt, a well-heeled English bumpkin whom the other cavaliers have befriended. Gulled by Lucetta, a whore, and her nasty pimp, Sancho, Blunt’s deprived of his money and clothes, given a whack, and dumped in a sewer . . . from which he emerges not only smelly but pissed.
The one serious miscalculation comes in that passage where Florinda’s held prisoner by Blunt. The scene’s basically about kidnapping and gang rape; pared down to its essential elements, it’s no different–no different at all–from the scene described at the top of this review, by reporter Kathy Dobie. And yet Donnelly allows its basic horror to be obscured by Ross Lehman’s clowning as Blunt.
