Aphra Behn was one of the first women in Britain to earn her living as a playwright, having turned to writing after being left out of pocket from her spying work for Charles II (yes, expenses scandals can cut both ways). Her work in The Rover, a hit when first performed in 1677, bursts with the kind of vitality and acuity you would expect from such a larger-than-life character.

In trying to capture Behn’s wry and liberated tone, Naomi Jones’s production starts off bold and likeable. Yet its mix of promenade and traverse staging is finally too fidgety to seduce. The opening scenes, in the bar of the brick-walled Playhouse, convey the right air of licentiousness as a pair of innocent young Spanish noblewomen meet a hard-wenching bunch of English Cavaliers at loose in Venice. Natalie Macaluso, as the love-hungry nun-to-be Helena, and Rebecca Shanks as her sister Florinda play it intriguingly low-key. In the shadows, with masked revellers and swordfights breaking out, the mood is alluring.

But as the play moves into the auditorium proper to continue its parallel romance plots, the story gets murky rather than alluring. Sam Wilkin has a fine glint in his eye as Willmore, the hard-wenching Rover himself. He’s raffish enough to entrance both Helena and the high-class courtesan Angellica Bianca, though it’s harder to believe he’s ruthless enough to attempt rape. Adura Onashile is a strong, sympathetic Bianca, while Jonathan Warde adds welcome sincerity as Blunt, who gets worked over by the duplicitous Lucetta.

Yet too much of the playing is neither stylised enough nor truthful enough, while some of the downplayed dialogue is in danger of being drowned out by the sound effects of Venetian water. If this is your first Rover — it was mine — the second half’s undynamic comings and goings may come to feel like a game for which you’re missing some of the rules.

Jones is aiming for something interesting, but as yet it’s only half-baked. She needs either more promenading or none at all. And this kind of Restoration writing depends, more than any other trick or insight, on a verbal command that the cast in this Rover don’t always display.

Box office: 020-7407 0234, to July 18

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