Forget William Shakespeare. This is Christopher Marlowe’s moment. Starring Edward Bluemel (My Lady Jane, Killing Eve) as hardworking, wary Will and Ncuti Gatwa (The Importance of Being Earnest, Doctor Who) as randy, troublesome Kit, Liz Duffy Adams’ new chamber play squirrels the literary titans away in a room in 1591 to 1593, playing out an energetic, erotic version of some historians’ suspicions that the playwrights’ lives – and Kit’s violent death – were more intertwined than we think.
“It is a history play,” Will chides, as Kit bends the truth in the script of Henry VI Part I, which the two great poets are writing together. “All the more reason to use our imaginations,” Kit retorts with an exaggerated flourish of his quill. Enjoying the historical license her character grants her, Duffy Adams whips the competitors into a frenzy and releases them at each other’s throats, letting them flirt, threaten, fight – and very occasionally write.
Lithe … Ncuti Gatwa in Born With Teeth. Photograph: Johan Persson
But the bold imagination Kit calls for in reframing history is restrained by Daniel Evans’ staging. Three walls of Neil Austin’s blinder lights form the writers’ cage. A wooden table is their stage, bed and barrier as their charged emotions flip-flop from rivals to lovers, their sometimes overly earnest outpourings sitting flush with stabbing insults and religious musings. The sharp shock of innovation in the opening scene exists in isolation, with the rest of the show relegated to the two men prowling around the table. Bursts of violent action are reserved for mid-act screens, though tension is diffused as Will steps out to address the audience, undermining the intensity of the locked-door environment.
Bluemel is a raggedy Will, shedding his initial weediness as his star rises. We watch as his reputation shifts from a wry whine that “no one’s studying me”, to an aside referencing his legacy where, “well,” he shrugs, “you know”. Sincere where his counterpart is scandalous, Will grapples with his feelings for Kit, simultaneously desiring acute proximity and terrified of giving in to temptation.
But this is Gatwa’s show. His boisterous Kit sweats in Zoë Thomas-Webb’s leather two-piece, his every lithe action a flirtation. He lunges towards Will first out of pure instinct, as something to shag, but he grows gentler, softened by his literary sparring partner. Beneath his restless exterior, he hides genuine admiration for his uncertain lover and unmistakable fear for the murky waters he has waded into.
The Elizabethan England Duffy Adams paints is one of heavy surveillance, as Kit tries to lure Will into his underworld of royal spies. But for all we’re told of the dangers outside this room, they remain at a distance. The stakes simmer throughout but never reach boiling point.
The ego-pumped versions of these men we see on stage would be delighted to know audiences and academics continue to ogle their lives and work – though Kit would no doubt be fuming that Will’s star has so drastically eclipsed his. An intelligent slice of historical fiction that offers muscular performances and reminds us to lavish more attention on the other great Elizabethan playwright, Born With Teeth yearns for a sharper bite.