Lord Strange has convened a writers’ room to work on a new drama about Henry VI. The two scribes hired for the project are Christopher Marlowe (Ncuti Gatwa) and the promising newcomer, William Shakespeare (Edward Bluemel). As an established and hugely successful playwright, Marlowe is the showrunner and Shakespeare seems somewhat in awe of the more experienced man, although the pair are actually the same age.
That’s the premise of this entertaining two-hander written by Liz Duffy Adams and directed by the RSC’s joint artistic director Daniel Evans. It depicts three meetings between Marlowe and Shakespeare over three consecutive years, from 1591 to 1593.
Strutting superstar Marlowe arrives at the first meeting in an expensive and fashionable leather ensemble, pumped up to bursting with testosterone and charisma. He’s performatively camp but he’s not just all doublet and no hose. He’s the sort of edgelord who’d bring a knife to a fist fight and he’s been On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, undertaking dangerous but lucrative undercover assignments for the safety of the realm. Shakespeare, meanwhile, seems an altogether smaller character — mild of temper, anxious to get on with the job in hand.
The pair are working in a private room in a London tavern, a long table the only furniture. Marlowe pooh-poohs the small beer that Shakespeare has ordered. He’s strictly a strong ale guy, a man of appetites and unashamedly, aggressively homosexual. Shakespeare is married with children but takes little persuasion to bat for the other side.
Bluemel and Gatwa are literally dripping and must be losing pounds every night
The pair banter, they flirt, they even do a little bit of work. Marlowe shoots down Shakespeare’s suggestion that Joan of Arc should be heroic. “She’s not a hero! She’s fucking French!”
Adams has a lot of fun with the dialogue. When Marlowe refers to “country matters”, he really wraps his mouth around the filthy pun that will later make its way into Hamlet. At another point Shakespeare suggests “there is more in heaven and earth than we can dream of”. “Born with teeth” is from Henry VI. There are knowing references to rival dramatists such as Thomas Kyd and John Fletcher. Adams also plays with the fact that we know so little of Shakespeare. He tells Marlowe that he wants to “disappear” into his characters: “I want to be invisible.” Mission accomplished. That’s why there is such an appetite for works featuring Shakespeare as a character — Shakespeare in Love, Upstart Crow, upcoming Oscar magnet Hamnet and so on.
There were a lot of laughs in the first act, not all of them earned. The audience — and there were plenty of fans of Gatwa, until recently Doctor Who, and Bluemel, star of a “romantasy” series called My Lady Lane — were desperate to crack up at even the weakest Carry On-level innuendo, the slightest bit of suggestive quill stroking.
And it’s not just a steamy show, it’s positively sweaty. The set has three walls forming the writers’ room and each wall holds an array of powerful lights, the heat of which can be felt in the front rows of the stalls. Bluemel and Gatwa are literally dripping and must be losing pounds every night.
However, the gradual power shift is well done. Shakespeare’s star is on the rise, while Marlowe seems to find himself in more and more trouble. And both actors are eminently watchable. Gatwa is energetic and limber; Bluemel more quiet and subtle.
It’s the sort of show where it helps to know a little of the context. Marlowe almost certainly was a government spy, who undertook missions in France and maybe the Netherlands. He probably was gay. He was certainly a dangerous man — a brawler and a holder of extreme views. Charles Nicholls’s excellent book The Reckoning, investigating Marlowe’s mysterious death, is acknowledged by Adams as an influence. And the latest scholarship — the inspiration for Adams — suggests that he and Shakespeare did work together on Henry VI.
And we all know the long-term upshot. Shakespeare’s works are performed and studied the world over. Marlowe barely manages the occasional appearance on the A-level syllabus.
Does Born With Teeth work as a commentary on how artists navigate authoritarian regimes, as Adams intends? Up to a point but the first act, with its emphasis on humour, slightly overshadows the more serious subsequent developments.
Still, at a brisk 90 minutes and no interval, it makes for a diverting, thought-provoking evening and you still have time to make the tavern afterwards and enjoy a couple of pots of strong ale, or maybe a brawl.
Born With Teeth at www.wyndhamstheatre.co.uk runs until 1 November
