TREATMENT: 

   Gentlemen of the Road follows Dorcas Fontaine and Fanny Cromwell, ladies of the night who moonlight as highwaymen – the flamboyant, carriage-robbing scourge of 17th-century London’s elite – to steal from wealthy men. With just some tailored suits and cat-hair mustaches, Dorcas and Fanny (a.k.a. Gaudy Gregory and Maximilian the Marquis) transform from overlooked wenches to celebrity criminals capable of scaring the shit out of their male subjugators, finding empowerment through male impersonation and camp.

   When Fanny discovers that Gaudy Gregory is her old friend Dorcas in disguise during a robbery gone awry, she sees an opportunity – she wants Dorcas to teach the other streetwalkers how to dominate their oppressors instead of living off the scraps they pay for a night of pleasure. However, Mama Magdalene (the grand madame of the Covent Garden Nunnery brothel) won’t tolerate it – women, she believes, achieve independence by exploiting men with their femininity. Fanny and Dorcas must teach the night-nuns without Mama finding out. 

   Fanny and Dorcas frame Lord Augustine Fanshawe (Fanny’s long-standing client) by dressing him in Gaudy Gregory’s costume and making it seem like he is the famous robber. With Fanshawe in jail, they take in his teenage carriage driver, John Treebert, and his beloved horse, Temperance, to live with them in the brothel. (The ladies worry about having a boy in the house, but Treebert seems more interested in ‘socializing’ with his horse than with them.) As Fanshawe awaits hanging, he finds himself a celebrity among the working-class poor and leans into the Gaudy Gregory character. Mama Magdalene develops a crush on him while Fanny realizes she has very confusing, sexy feelings for Dorcas whenever Dorcas is performing as Gaudy. 

   Gentlemen of the Road explores the empowerment, domination, and subversion politics of gender. It is not a typical period piece – it’s raunchy, modern-minded, acerbic, and queer as hell.