Drawing on Caravaggio’s painting, The Seven Acts of Mercy, as inspiration, Lustgarten’s play attempts a commonality between the seventeenth century painter’s relationship with power (nobles and the Church) and his depiction of the common man’s empathy to his fellow man, as outlined in Matthew 25:36-37, and contemporary down-at-heel lives in Bootle, Liverpool

There is a certain irony in that at the same time as Shakespeare’s Globe in London has parted company with its new(ish) director Emma Rice for being too technical, too untraditional and too innovative, that other great bastion dedicated to the works of the Bard, the Royal Shakespeare Company, has mounted a production that is, at times, more like a video game than a stage play.

The Rover is set in Naples during Cromwell’s reign. Amongst banished cavaliers eking out an existence as mercenaries, and women evading society’s restraints in the freedom of carnival. And Ingram’s coup de théâtre sets that fiesta on fire with Cuban-style music by Grant Olding and incendiary dancing. She also movingly draws out Benn’s feminist concerns, smuggled in amongst the laddish action.

A full synopsis is essential to understanding, but the main story is of two young warriors, cousins, intimate friends and captives of war. Their mutual devotion evaporates, when both fall in love with a beautiful girl seen from their prison window. One is released and takes to the woods to remain close to his dream of love, whilst the other is freed by the gaoler’s daughter.