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.
