Phwoar! The chance to see a jacked and shirtless Ncuti Gatwa snogging his snake-hipped, chisel-cheekboned former Sex Education co-star Edward Bluemel is undoubtedly part of the appeal of Liz Duffy Adams’s seductively clever two-hander. The American writer imagines Christopher Marlowe (Gatwa’s ‘Kit’) collaborating with Shakespeare (Bluemel’s ‘Will’) on the three parts of Henry VI as religious and political tensions run high in Elizabethan England.
Her play blends intrigue and shifty eroticism with in-jokes and a discourse on creativity. The keynote of Daniel Evans’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, of which he is co- artistic director, is fluidity: nothing is every quite what it seems. That it’s been mounted in the West End with two hot TV faces – “there’s not enough money in theatre,” deadpans Gatwa’s Kit – adds an extra layer of knowingness: the Elizabethan stage relied on star casting.
We first see Will suspended by the wrists and Kit by the ankles, pleading for their lives against charges of treason and blasphemy. Video screens (with the lurid green tinge of Charli xcx’s Brat) show them crying under torture. Then Will saunters on stage saying: “Yeah, that didn’t happen.” It’s 1591 and he’s the cautious, hard-working new kid on the block, with The Comedy of Errors and the lurid Titus Andronicus to his name. He’s got a wife and kids in Stratford-upon-Avon and a wider family with now-heretical Catholic beliefs.
Kit, meanwhile, is a preening sybarite who seemingly tossed off hits like Tamburlaine and Faustus while drunk. He flaunts his homosexuality and his role in the spy games played at court by Raleigh, Essex and Cecil. He wants the provincial glover’s son to do the heavy lifting on a new history play but baulks at Will’s reliance on sources such as Holinshed: “Anyone fuss about me getting stuff out of order can get f*cked!”
Duffy uses the now-familiar trope of blending period and modern idioms but does so with aplomb. When Will talks about communing with the ineffable in his work, Kit ripostes: “There’s nothing I can’t eff!” Gatwa uses his own Scottish accent throughout. His Kit has been to “Uni”, where he spent his time “rubbing up against the sons of power”.
The language pulsates with sexual imagery and suppressed fear. This is mirrored in Joanna Scotcher’s deceptively simple set and costume design. Kit’s quill is bigger than Will’s, his leather outfit costlier and sexier. The two pursue each other round a table, hedged on three sides by vast batteries of lights, suggesting the unyielding scrutiny of a police state.
The script is also full of nods to both writers’ work, which could be smug and irritating but works here. When Will opines that the lascivious, carnivorous Kit was “born with teeth” – a line that will make its way into Richard III – both scramble to scribble it down and claim it. Shakespeare’s own name is the subject of riddles and puns. Will he or won’t he succumb to Kit’s carnal and suborning approaches? In this cat and mouse game, whose will is strongest? On the minus side, Duffy overdoes the signposting of Shakespeare’s eventual eclipse of Marlowe.
Bluemel is an engaging Will, wary and diffident, almost petulant at times in his resistance to Kit’s outrageousness. But it’s Gatwa’s show. He has grown in theatrical stature since his entertaining but effortful Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre last year and exudes charisma as he prowls the stage like a lazy but lethal big cat. He also looks pretty damn good with his shirt off.
At 85 minutes the play is slightly scanty. It ends abruptly, with a mawkish epilogue by Will that co-opts Prospero’s farewell in The Tempest. But the way Duffy’s script entwines the vicissitudes of sex, celebrity and Elizabethan politics is enormous fun. And as star vehicles go, Evan’s production is a smart and subtle one.
Wyndham’s Theatre, booking to Nov 1; delfontmackintosh.co.uk
