Edward II

by Christopher Marlowe

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 March 2019

Nick Bagnall directs Tom Stuart as King Edward II, Katie West as Queen Isabella, Jonathan Livingstone as Young Mortimer, and Beru Tessema as Piers Gaveston, with a supporting company of seven taking the other parts, in Christopher Marlowe's play about the disastrous career of the king who fatefully places a selfish desire for personal pleasure above the recognised responsibilities of a medieval ruler.

Marlowe, often seen as a histrionic, not to say bombastic, playwright in contrast to the more nuanced Shakespeare, is well served in the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where the lyrical aspects of his language can be appreciated as much as the dramatic turns of the plot. In particular, the intense, and intensely physical, relationship between Edward and Gaveston is expressed by high-flown but not insincere poetry, which has a more personal resonance in the smaller acting space of this theatre.

Doctor Faustus

by Christopher Marlowe

seen at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 6 April 2016

Maria Aberg directs Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan, who choose the parts of Mephistopheles and Doctor Faustus by lot at the beginning of each performance, and a company of actors in the minor parts (many of them also taking part in the concurrent production of Don Quixote). The choice depends on which match struck at the same time by the two actors is extinguished first: that actor plays Mephistopheles. (I understand that this choice is overridden on days when there is both a matinee and an evening performance, to ensure that each actor plays each part on that day.)

The costumes are modern - the two leads in white suits to begin with, though when the play itself starts, Mephistopheles provocatively wears no shirt - and the acting space of the Swan is a black floor on which Faust soon paints a pentagram in white, and a wall of plastic bubble wrap which is ripped to shreds as the magical incantations of the first scene begin to take effect. The Seven Deadly Sins are presented by Lucifer as a grotesque fashion parade; the characters at the papal court wear elaborate and exaggerated clerical garb as if they too are fantastical elements of Faustus's imagination.