Christopher Hunter’s acclaimed performance of Venus and Adonis was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 where it thrilled audiences and critics alike. As a result of this success it was invited to play The Rose Playhouse, London.

William Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis when London’s theatres were forced to close during the Plague epidemic of 1593. He was 28 years old and his career as a playwright in its infancy. Venus and Adonis was his first work to be published and was an instant bestseller, its huge popularity establishing his reputation.

The poem’s success was due in no small part to its erotic passages and vivid narrative. It has a youthful energy and it is clearly the work of a dramatist. Christopher Hunter became intrigued by the psychology of the characters and the possibility of turning the poem into a play. During this process something darker and more disturbing emerged from the soft-focus of Elizabethan erotica, revealing a darker world that explored the dynamics of mortality, love, lust and sexual power.

Rather than a romantic love story, Venus and Adonis tells of the last 24 hours of an innocent young boy who walks out of his front door one morning, is sexually assaulted by an older woman and never returns home.