We've got a shedful of wives out the back better looking than yours, going for ten, twelve, fourteen - we've got everything from your bogstandard basically charmless but does-the-job four grand, right up to your pukka fifteen and a half flexible with foreign languages - and humour, for an extra Archer.' Descending from the heavenly sphere of the gods to the mortal world below, Arcturus raises a mighty storm. For Labrax, a 'procurer' of women, the storm brings shipwreck and ruin. For his two female captives it offers a chance of escape. Washed up on a rocky coastline the two women seek refuge in the shrine of Venus, but it seems that the goddess alone cannot protect them. They are forced to rely instead on the help of the elderly Daemones, who is already struggling to control his reluctant slaves; the impudent Seeparnio and the inept Gripus. Drawn from a lost Greek play, The Storm is the most popular of Plautus' Roman comedies. This version opens at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in July 2005 as part of the 'World and Underworld' Season.

Adapted by: Peter Oswald