Edward II ☆☆☆☆☆
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
“All they that love not tobacco & boys are fools”, Christopher Marlowe famously declared, and whilst there’s no tobacco in his play Edward II, there’s plenty of boy-love – and plenty of fools.
Nick Bagnall’s production foregrounds the central love triangle of King Edward (Tom Stuart), Gaveston his male favourite ,and Isabella (Katie West), his wife and mother to his son. Marlowe’s play covers twenty years of history and in this streamlined, fast-paced edit, the political ins and outs are interplay with the domestic jealousies and tensions at court.
The entire cast put in terrific performances, both energetic and sensitive to Marlow’s poetry. There’s a nice contemporary touch in the inclusion of Northern accents for Isabella and her son, Edward, and the production, despite the beautiful period costumes, has a very modern sense of fun and irreverence, with women playing Earls and interracial, samesex kissing.
Music and lighting (almost entirely by candle) is used to great effect, the former to create a blisteringly energetic start to the second half as civil war tears England in two (another contemporary resonance? Brexit, anyone?) and the latter in the execution scene, where the semi-darkness makes the glowing red-hot poker stand out excruciatingly.
Appropriately enough, the play opened in LGBT History month and I’d urge anyone interested in queer history and queer theatre to get a ticket asap.
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com until April 20th 2019
Review by Jonathan KempQueerguru London Correspondent Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
Labels: 2019, Jonathan Kemp, London Theatre, review
