Aphra Behn.  Not a distant relation of Hilary, but a Restoration playwright, sometime spy and one of the first Englishwomen to earn her living by writing. Her best known play is the 1677 comedy The Rover, and Loveday Ingram’s rollicking production for the Royal Shakespeare Company shows why.

It’s Naples, it’s carnival time, and everybody – in disguise, half the time – finds themselves in love tangles involving everybody else and everybody else else. Principally there are the three Spanish sisters (yes, in Naples) who disguise themselves to go out and find love on their own terms rather than marry whomever their father or brother tells them to, and three English Cavaliers in exile following the Civil War (not the Spanish one... are you following?), one of whom has a history with the eldest sister, another of whom... Well, let’s save him till last. Then there are the Spanish brother, his arrogant friend, and the famous courtesan Angellica Bianca, yours for a thousand crowns a month and a bloody bargain at the price.

So... [deep breath]: Don Pedro aims to hire Angellica, but finds himself in competition with his friend Don Antonio, to whom Pedro wants to marry his sister Florinda, so they arrange to fight, but when Antonio is injured he enlists Belville, who doesn’t know that he’s to duel with the brother of his beloved Florinda, whose sister Hellena has ensnared Captain Willmore, but not very securely because he beats both the Spaniards to Angellica, then jilts her for... well, basically, everyone who comes within hailing distance, including Hellena (again), Florinda and... no, I’ve lost track by now as well.

As Willmore, the title character and a man unable to keep his rapier in his scabbard in any sense of the phrase, Joseph Millson is irresistible. He swashbuckles, he leches, he fits in some terrific drunk acting and a whole portfolio of extra lines: on press night he nearly corpsed Angellica when she was supposed to be bellowing furiously at him. She’s played by Alexandra Gilbreath, who gets to show off both her comic and dramatic acting skills, not to mention both her legs.

But the company is full of folk to fall in love with, regardless of their sex or your sexuality. Ingram uses the carnival setting to keep things sexy as well as rambunctious, and it all works a treat. A live band pounds out Latin numbers and at one point what sounded like a variation on a theme of “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag”.

Through it all, author Behn walks a skilful line between the audience expectations of the time (which include sexual assault as comedy) and her own ideas about the autonomy and cleverness of women. It’s a smart, raucous, universally snoggable treat.

Written for The Lady.