The Rover Oakland Tribune Review

Courtesy of The Oakland Tribune

'Rover' sends fun and games right over

Woman's Will show enlivens local parks

By Chad Jones, STAFF WRITER

IN Aphra Behn's "The Rover," women try mightily to be just as debauched as men, and they very nearly succeed.

Spirited and saucy, the women of the play vow to exert some oft-denied power and play the same carnal games that men play. Considering that the play was written in 1677, the women make a mighty effort to kick-start womankind's sexual liberation.

What better troupe to perform this topsy-turvy tale than Woman's Will? The all-female troupe tours Bay Area parks during the summer -- usually doing something wonderfully Shakespearean.

This year, artistic director Erin Merritt, who also helms "The Rover," has something of the same vintage in mind -- but with less poetry and more sass.

Behn is the first known British woman to have made a living as a playwright. She based "The Rover" on a massive 10-act play by Thomas Killigrew, a friend of exiled Charles II. The original play aimed to demonstrate what cads the British Cavaliers were as they stormed through other countries and left paths of ruined women in their wake.

Behn's play kept Killigrew's juiciest bits and became a big hit that continued to be produced into the early 18th century.

In so many ways, "The Rover" is a good match for Woman's Will. The 12-woman cast is called upon to play good men behaving badly, good women behaving scandalously and bad women behaving scrupulously. There's an upside-down simplicity to the play, set in Naples during the final days of Carnival in 1652, and that simplicity lends itself to an unadorned outdoor setting.

Set designer Alison Tassie has attempted to create a defined performance space by hanging cloth drapes between some poles, but this "Rover" would work just as well without any set at all. When the action shifts from indoors to outdoors, actors unnecessarily turn the cumbersome drapes around to help us discern the shift. We get it.

Amy Nielson's costumes -- poofy, colorful dresses for the ladies and austere black and white for the men -- are the production's most instructive element and give us all the social standing and military ranking information we need.

Behn's plot has a trio of upper-crust sisters (Lianne Marie Dobbs, Kendra Chell and Jeanette Harrison) disguising themselves so that they can carry on with randy men at the Carnival celebration, where "men and women be free as they will'ere Lent be come."

Three British Cavaliers (Emily Rosenthal, Rami Margron and Desiray McFall) arrive in town and vow to have "all the honey of matrimony but none of the sting," and each ends up with one of the sisters, but not before two hours' worth of mistaken identities, sword fights and lusty pursuits.

At Saturday afternoon's opening performance at John Hinkel Park in Berkeley, the show was in good shape. Only the combat scenes seemed tentative.

Acting levels are uneven, but in a park setting, the more important quality is energy. On that score, the entire cast is super charged.

There's tremendous fun to be had watching these women pose as wanton women and gallivanting men. As a park entertainment, "The Rover" ranks among this summer's more enjoyable options.

But there is a problem inherent in this production, and that comes in the women's playing of the men. For Behn's play to truly work, these men need to be the world's biggest cads.

When an over-protective brother forces his sister into a horrible marriage "for her own good" and then turns around and lays chase to the disguised sister without recognizing her, we should be a little horrified. But here, the men are not horrible enough. The Woman's Will actors wink at us and say, "These are hypocritical, selfish, sex-crazed men!" But the male nastiness doesn't register on more than an intellectual level.

More effective than the farcical romance is the subplot involving a courtesan (Bernadette Quattrone) who suddenly lurches into love. When she meets the rover of the title (Margron), she actually falls for the guy, although she does everything in her power to squelch the feelings.

It's all part of Behn's role-reversal scheme, but this element has some depth and real sadness to it.
That's not necessarily what you're looking for on a sunny midsummer's afternoon, but amid all the sexual shenanigans in "The Rover," a little heart -- even a broken one -- goes a long way.