Writer: Christopher Marlowe
Director: Madison Cole
The new king invites his boyfriend to return from exile and join him in power. Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II opens with Piers Gaveston reading a letter from the newly-crowned Edward: “My father is deceas’d. Come Gaveston / and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.” In this speedy version from Small Beer Theatre Company, Gaveston (seductively played by Ciaran Barker), bursts onstage in rhinestone specs, cowboy boots, fake-fur coat and gives a flamboyant piano recital before reading it.
Two major obstacles stand in the way of the king’s passion: the barons bitterly resent this commoner’s rapid ascent and Edward is already married to the French princess. Zoe Mavrides plays Isabella with a feisty mix of contempt and frustration; she and sole nobleman Mortimer (Caleb Cura) are a committed supporting cast with Elsa Mills as token spear carrier. Edward himself (Al Levy) is a suitably petulant, tortured ruler, in his lightweight crown and stripey pyjamas, drawing us into his painful dilemmas.
Reducing Marlowe’s full-length play to 50 minutes and his cast of 30-odd to just five young actors, Small Beer races through the text. The set is an ordinary flat with leather sofa and pink-quilted mattress bed. A bottle of vodka, cans of beer, a hammer, and an incongruous set of brass fireplace tools are lurking around the set like Chekhov’s gun, each destined to play a role before the end.
Small Beer celebrates the drama as “one of the earliest queer plays in the canon” and there are chastely tender moments between Edward and Gaveston. The expertly choreographed fight scenes are far more visceral. The show’s greatest challenge is condensing an international tale of kings and armies (one of England’s earliest history plays) into a fringe-style, one-room show. The blurb suggests claustrophobic drama (“four people stuck in a house together”) and this works in terms of individual love and angst, with Edward and Gaveston making out in front of an unimpressed Isabella. It’s less convincing as the action becomes more epic. Some of the play’s most compelling interactions come when Ciaran Barker doubles as the sadistic Lightbourn, whose name is an English translation of Lucifer.
Director Madison Cole says in an online artist’s statement “I am not interested in making perfect theatre … because life is a mess.” The coke-snorting king and his favourite, the jealous wife and her lover cram plenty of messy humanity into less than an hour.
Runs until 6 August 2024.
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
