21 February – 5 April
We are ushered in to walk around a huge coffin draped in the Royal Standard and graced with the orb, sceptre, mace and crown. In this way, we, the audience, become participants in the Lying in State of the dead King Edward I. There are obvious recent parallels. Thus, from the outset of this shocking and troubling play, we are invited to consider the contemporary relevance of its complex thematic tangle of private desire and public duty, power, ambition and cold inhumanity.
Christopher Marlowe conflated 25 years of English history into five acts to cover the unhappy reign of Edward II. The Royal Shakespeare Company has condensed those five acts into a fast paced one hour forty minutes, running without an interval, focussing heavily on Edward’s homosexual relationship with Piers Gaveston. The original may have been equally clear about the nature of the king’s obsession, but, in this version, director Daniel Raggett has given the two men much more stage time.
Daniel Evans gives an impressive performance as Edward, petulant, tyrannical and uncertain, unable to sustain command from one minute to the next as the fatal weakness of his passion draws him from the demands of kingship. Eloka Ivo has a confident swagger as his lover Gaveston. He first appears wrapped in a white towel in a bath house, all glistening torso, sexual electricity and camp mannerisms. There’s an element of stereotype here but, like his racial difference, it only serves to accentuate his position as an outsider in the uptight English court.
As the King’s nemesis, Mortimer, explains, it is Gaveston’s low birth as much as his ‘wanton humour’ that irks him. But this doesn’t stop him and his fellow nobles from indulging in a spate of testosterone fuelled queer bashing when Gaveston falls into their power. The onstage violence gives this new version of the play a much more intense and personal feel than arises from Marlowe’s script where most of the horror takes place offstage. Here, not only is Gaveston’s death cruelly portrayed but his bloodstained body lies onstage throughout the scene as a reminder of what the nobles are capable of.
The kings’ ending is even more shocking, at once clinical and brutal, with a brilliantly disturbing Jacob James Beswick as the professional assassin Lightborn.
It’s a difficult play to perform and produce. However sympathetic one may feel to his position as a gay man, Edward is more tragic victim than tragic hero, following his heart’s desires even when his country is falling apart, thereby opening the gates to ruthless ambition. Enzo Cilenti is perfect as the sinister Mortimer, his cold calculation a fine contrast to the emotionally febrile King. It is easy to see why the abandoned Queen Isabella (Ruta Gedmintas) might have fallen for him.
These machinations are acted out on a bare stage against a stark black backdrop with a low drone of ambient sound accentuating the mood of menace. Occasionally the backdrop rises to reveal hints of the outside world, as when the nobles watch TV news reporting the invasion by the King of France or when they plan the King’s death around a dinner table laden with candles and goblets of wine. But mostly we are in Edward’s reality, culminating on the stinking floor of his dungeon smeared with his own excrement, as he looks towards death. However fine the production and performance, it’s a hard play to watch.
★★★★☆ Ros Carne 6 March 2025
photographers credit @ Helen Murray
