Local award-wining playwright Juliet Jenkin’s latest play is set against the backdrop of the life of Mary Renault, a historical novelist who lived and wrote in Camps Bay.

An Englishwoman who moved to South Africa in the late 1940s, Renault’s works of the 1950s to 1980s became iconic works for gay people, dealing as they did with love, war, homosexuality and heroism during key periods in the history of Ancient Greece.

Jenkin’s play imagines an encounter between Renault (Diane Wilson) and her hero, Alexander the Great, in which we also meet Renault’s lifelong companion and lover, Julie Mullard (Adrienne Pierce), and one of Alexander’s lovers, Hephaistion (Francis Chouler).

A newcomer to Cape Town’s stage, Armand Aucamp makes his professional stage debut as the Greek general in Mary and the Conqueror.

Aucamp is not a total stranger to acting, having acted for film and tv while studying at CityVarsity. Since he was studying a film-oriented course, he found himself as much in front of the cameras as behind. That’s when the acting bug bit, when he realised that he liked the intensity of the hour-and-a-half to two hours on stage.

He was “man-Bella” in Francesco Nassimbeni’s Clan.

Aucamp met Roy Sargeant last year during the run of The Taming the Shrew.

He was standing in for one of the acrobatic performers, and Sargeant asked him to audition for a role in Mary and the Conqueror, which he is directing.

“This play is about Alexander’s encounter with Mary Renault in limbo,” explained the 24-year-old.

“I’m focusing more on what she wanted Alexander to be in her novels. There’s a wealth of know-ledge about him in her books… she made him a person showing his heart, his emotion and his relation-ship with Hephaistion, his lifelong companion and lover.”

Given three (The King Must Die, Persian Boy and Fire from Heaven) of Renault’s many books for research, Aucamp points out that he also tried to reference facts, but thinks what should come through in his portrayal is the passion and drive of the character that came through in Renault’s writing.

Rehearsals started at the end of August and Aucamp’s trying not to be star-struck, working with Sargeant – “he’s amazing, such a legend, as is Diane… they’re so accommodating”.

The Mary Renault character is played by Diane Wilson and, while the author may have transformed Alexander from an iconic figure on the page into a person with a rich, complex personal life, she was much more reticent about the details of her own life.

Jenkin’s play, though, explores this unexplored facet of Renault’s own life, by entangling the lives and loves of Mary and Alexander.

Aucamp explained that when his character interacts with Hephaistion they do so in ancient times, but when Alexander and Mary interact, it is in a contem-porary setting, though in limbo.

“So, it’s very different and bizarre. He’s not at all the way she thought of him, so she doesn’t know who he is.

“So it was difficult to go from this real intimate relationship with Hephaistion, to this… almost Puck-ish character. Having him teasing her, it’s also a nice play on the relationship.”

“Juliet Jenkin has captured the intricacies of relationships that are applicable then and now in a beautifully bizarre way.

“It’s actually quite uplifting and Juliet’s writing is quite quirky.”

l Mary and the Conqueror has two low-price previews on Thursday and Friday at 7.30pm and runs from October at 8.15pm, with matinees at 2.30pm on October 8 and 15. Tickets are R60 and R80. Book through Computicket or Artscape Dial-A-Seat at 021 471 7695.

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