Sex, Death and a Baked Swan
Rosemary Branch

BEBORAH Cook describes writing for the stage as “nerve-wracking because you can actually see your audience” but “a real pleasure doing something of your own”.
“Meanwhile writing for television can begin to make you feel like a sausage making machine,” she says, but adds, relieved: “The laughs seemed to come at all the right places.” Cook has scripted enough episodes of Eastenders, Casualty and The Archers to know how to pull a laugh from the audience when she wants one.
Another novelty of being the playwright is creating characters. For Cook, inspiration for her first venture from television to stage came when evidence of the first female gladiator was unearthed, here in London (Southwark, 2002).
“The discovered remains confirm a rumour that has been around for years, that a female gladiator did fight in the arena, probably against another female,” she says. “The burial proves this was a woman of great stature in Roman society.”
Unsurprisingly for someone who has scripted some of soap’s most feisty females, this female fighter is a character that caught Cook’s imagination. The play is based in the changing rooms of an amphitheatre, in Londinium, 200AD. Thousands of spectators await ex-senator’s wife, Gladiatrix Claudia in combat with barbarian, and ex-slave, Greeneyes. The drama that unfolds reveals how they have come from mistress and slave to face each other as equals in the arena, fighting for dignity or death.
This tale of female rivalry, dressed up in war paint and breast-plates, really is Rome sexed up, and these are women determined to survive.
This is an empire where everybody is owned by somebody – slaves are owned by senator’s wives, wives are owned by the senators and senators are owned by emperors.
Written by someone well acquainted with East End organised crime, domestic violence, and all the dirty play that comes in tow, Cook evokes a Roman London where all the dynamics of soap opera action are alive and kicking.
Claudia slathers on the oil before going to the arena in the same manner Kat Slater might slap on the lipstick before facing a public brawl in the square.
If you’re wondering where baked swan fits in, this is a separate short play that precedes the above. The wife of an influential Roman politician, in the process of adorning her husband’s dinner table, demonstrates that she who rules the kitchen, rules the empire.

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