The Dallas HUB Theater opened 2006 with the REGIONALPREMIERE of a new adaptation of the classic romantic comedy written in 1677 by the world's first female professional playwright, Aphra Behn. Josh Costello's adaptation premiered at the Chance Theater in Orange County, California in January, 2005 and enjoyed a live PBS telecast in April. In it, 4 young girls at a sleepover enact the story of The Rover as a game, using their imaginations to deal with the complications of their friendships, to outdo one another, and to explore their fears and dreams about growing up and falling in love. Backstage West says of the original production "...the way Costello relates the story — through a quirky game of charades that slowly evolves into a metaphor on how imagination can bring people together — results in one of the cleverest and most well-intentioned plays in some time..."

THEATER REVIEW: Updated 'Rover' rolls with youthful charm
07:48 AM CST on Friday, February 3, 2006
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News

Here's a way to make a show critic-proof: Have the actors play amateur actors, preferably very young and inexperienced ones.

That's the formula for The Rover, at least in the version now being performed by SATER at the Dallas Hub Theater. This started out as one of the earliest English plays by a female author. Aphra Behn's original, first
performed in 1677, was just as bawdy as any other Restoration play, despite the writer's gender. But that's not quite what we have here.

Josh Costello's contemporary adaptation premiered a year ago at the Chance Theatre in California's Orange County. It tells the cynically romantic original story, but four modern young girls are acting it out at a slumber
party. Call it women's answer to Shakespeare's R&J , in which four high-school boys work on the Bard's text.

Most of the words in the new The Rover are still Aphra Behn's. A stage-struck younger sister (Cara Miles), while reading the original play in bed, horns in on the gossip the older sister's friends are dishing out. She's obviously precocious, able to quote or identify lines from Shakespeare at will. Somehow, and somewhat improbably, she quickly persuades the others to act out the story she's reading.

She plays the younger sister, Hellena, naturally. Her older sister (Victoria Pope) plays, you guessed it, the older sister, Florinda. All four performers portray multiple characters, sometimes acting out the scenes by making a Barbie and a G.I. Joe or some stuffed animals talk. But Paula Wood's main responsibility is Willmore, the roving sea captain of the play's title, while Heather Pratt quickly switches back and forth between Angelica, the expensive courtesan Willmore admires, and Bellville, Florinda's virtuous suitor.

Since these are all supposed to be high-school kids playing at acting, there's no pressure to make a period flavor or an elevated style convincing. In fact, Ms. Miles is still in high school herself; her acting is the most
self-conscious, but you can argue that that's appropriate to the character.

Director Christie Shane's production, reviewed Thursday, has a lot of energy and gets its share of chuckles. Ms. Wood is particularly good at getting the audience to see the jokes that the naughty Willmore keeps making; and there's a nice irony seeing a woman playing a heartless, promiscuous but good-natured male. The occasional moments that the play-within-the-play breaks down (Ms. Pratt's character keeps wanting to stop toward the end) don't make a whole lot of sense – but that's probably Mr. Costello's fault.

PARK CITIES PEOPLE REVIEW by Glen Arberry

Aphra Behn’s The Rover has the bawdy appeal of other restoration comedies like Wycherly’s The Country Wife, and the four young actresses in the play do a fine job. If it feels a little like a high school production, it’s because the talented Cara Miles, who plays the youngest, is still a senior at Red Oak, and her sister in the play, Victoria Pope, just graduated recently. Paula Wood (as the rakish Rover) and Heather Pratt, acting both male and female parts, give spirited professional performances.