She is Frieda Joubert, a librarian (Scarlett Brookes) and he is Errol Philander, a schoolteacher (Shaq Taylor) at a township school. They met when he came to the library to obtain a book to do with his correspondence course. He is looking to improve and she is looking to help him, but they fell in love.
Many Spanish plays of this period are concerned with duty, honour and loyalty and Peribanez is no exception. It is a celebration of peasant culture, showing the moral integrity of the dutiful peasant. Its tale of an overlord, the Commander (David Harewood) who threatens to take as his mistress the beautiful Casilda (Jackie Morrison) wife of a peasant farmer Peribanez (Michael Nardone) after the Commander is gored by a bull and carried to their home.
The play opens at an exhibition where one of the visitors is an actor, Lou (Kiza Deen) who is working on a film, The Ghost Ship, about the painter Joseph Turner and his painting where she plays an African woman Olu.