Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel in BORN WITH TEETH at Wyndham's Theatre. Photo by Johan Persson.London, 1591: England is beset by paranoia and a murky network of spies. Two playwrights meet in the backroom of a pub to collaborate on a play that will become Henry VI. Over the course of three meetings over three years, Shakespeare and Marlowe will debate poetry and religion, verbally spar and almost come to blows, be dangerously seduced by each other… and occasionally write.
The play delights in paying homage to and poking fun at the wider literary and historical canon that the characters belong to. The script is peppered with references to Shakespeare and Marlowe’s works: a sneering Marlowe quotes Iago’s ‘I am that I am’ and bids a tearful Shakespeare farewell with King Hamlet’s ‘remember me’. The audience obligingly snickers when Marlowe contemptuously tells Shakespeare that he will never amount to greatness and no one will ever study him. Mixed into all the rich, poetic language and witty wordplay you’d expect from a play about two linguistic masters is a delightful sprinkling of anachronistic modern language. ‘I think Christ is dead sexy,’ Marlowe quips, before launching into a meditation on his relationship with religion that is both cleverly funny and deeply profound. The tone across the board is equal parts sly and reverent.
The chemistry between Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel is scintillating, sizzling and powerful, whether they’re trading quips or flirting or brawling. Every scene is packed with tension and erotic energy, marked by a subtle shift in their dynamic: first it is Marlowe who holds the knife, quite literally, but over time his stronger romantic feelings for Shakespeare causes the power to tip in the latter’s favour. Gatwa steals the show with a raw, maniacal energy that has him leaping around the stage, seducing the audience with each mannerism as much as he does Shakespeare. His Marlowe oozes charisma and irreverence with every word and deliberately gleeful sexual innuendo - ‘mean you country matters?’ he cracks in his first scene, another reference to Hamlet. Bluemel, meanwhile, plays a Shakespeare who is younger, more boyish and earnest, endearing in his commitment to his cause. ‘I just want to write,’ he insists repeatedly, and responds to Marlowe’s teasing and goading with a mix of fond exasperation and barely repressed desire.
Staging-wise, Born With Teeth is claustrophobic, taking place in a single room, a sparsely decorated space dominated by a single table for Shakespeare and Marlowe to write on, chase each other around, and occasionally make out on top of. The stage is illuminated by nearly 200 harsh, bright strobe lights that symbolise the unblinking eyes of the surveillance state in which the characters operate. There is a sense of a larger world offstage, with a broiling political arena, backstabbing and machinations between the Queen’s courtiers and spies, the changing face of the theatre, and the threat of the plague. We don’t see any of that; it’s only referenced in the conversations between Shakespeare and Marlowe, which are the focal point of the play.
But it doesn’t feel like a missed opportunity - rather there’s a delightful intimacy and curdling sense of suspense in witnessing history through the window of the fascinating pull-and-push between the two men, and how they change as their world changes. In the process they debate vastly opposing styles to writing (Shakespeare is a fan of historical sources; Marlowe treats them with contempt) and what it means to be a poet, and to survive as a writer, in the deeply complicated landscape of Elizabethan England. It’s a treat for those familiar with early modern drama, and equally fascinating for those who aren’t.
Born With Teeth is playing at Wyndham’s Theatre until November 1st.
