The Two Gentlemen of Verona Poppy Miller as Silvia. This production set the play in a grimy unnamed contemporary city where material obsession was all-encompassing. In 2004, Fiona Buffini directed a touring production for the RSC. Premiering at the Swan, the production starred Alex Avery as Valentine, Laurence Mitchell as Proteus, Vanessa Ackerman as Julia and Rachel Pickup as Silvia. Buffini set the play in a swinging 1930s "milieu", and featuring numerous dance numbers. Additionally, London and New York replaced Verona and Milan; initially, Valentine and Proteus are shown as living in the English countryside, in a rural paradise devoid of any real vitality, the
Proteus a backstory that makes the father of his character Theoclymenus, Proteus, a king in Egypt who had been wed to a Nereid Psamathe. In keeping with one of his themes in "Helen", Euripides mentions in passing "Eido" ("image"), a daughter of the king and therefore sister of Theoclymenus who underwent a name-change after her adolescence and became "Theonoë," "god-minded," since she was as it turned out capable of foreseeing the future--as such, she is a prophet who appears as a crucial character in the play. The play's king Proteus is already dead at the start of the action, and his