REVIEW: "Sexy and dangerous" 'Born With Teeth' has bite!

It’s London, 1591. In an upstairs room over an inn rising star playwright William Shakespeare (Edward Bluemel), has enlisted the help of fading playwright Christopher Marlowe (Ncuti Gatwa) to write a sure-fire blockbuster play about Henry VI - or maybe three plays if it all goes well. They are both 27 years old.

That’s the intriguing storyline which Liz Duffy Adams gives us as our starting point. But there’s a lot more going on than a writing circle. Marlowe has two more pressing reasons to be in the room where it happened.

He wants to recruit Shakespeare to be a spy for Queen Elizabeth‘s supporters, as he is. But more pressingly he wants to get in Shakespeare’s pants. Literally. This is a sex-fuelled drama that simmers and boils. Gatwa, leaping round the stage, whipping off his shirt, making lewd suggestions, has more testosterone than the England rugby team dressing room - and all of it aimed at bedding Will.

Now it has to be said that nobody knows they ever met, let alone collaborated, but it seems likely. Adams gives them three meetings - covering two years and the three parts of Henry VI which we know today.

The scenes are separated by high-action in your face monochrome video of torture and confession involving the two men - but as Will tells us out front at the end of the video burst “it never happened”. And that’s the crux of this play - did any of it ever happen?

England is a divided country: warring factions of Protestants and Catholics threaten civil war at any moment; there’s a pandemic round the corner and the harvests have failed. Sounds a bit more modern than 1591.

Gatwa is clearly having the time of his life, strutting like a peacock, with a peacock feather quill pen as his ultimate phallic symbol. He literally chases Will round the stage, seducing him with knowing looks and wandering hands.

By contrast, Bluemel gives the ambitious Will a cute coyness that is food and drink for Gatwa’s quick-fire wit, sexy innuendo and promiscuity. Marlowe lives by being outrageous, writing dangerous, subversive things and getting into trouble with the authorities who are spying on the spy, no doubt. He’s a feral cat with his nine lives running out.

The two actors have a rarefied chemistry that is both sexy and dangerous. And while Gatwa is busy predating, it’s Will who pounces - pinning Gatwa to a large table, caressing and frantically kissing him. So much for closet sublimation.

But does he mean it? At this stage, who knows? But a later more telling scene has them acting out a passionate farewell between two rebels in the Henry play - Essex and Margaret. The sexual and emotional content is both beautiful and shocking. But of course we have to remember women in plays of the time were played by men, so such love scenes were commonplace. But is this an indication of Will’s real feelings for Marlowe?

The writing goes on, Marlowe disappears regularly for spying duties, and the three plays are completed. In a plague-filled London, with the theatres shut, things come to a head and to protect his friend, Shakespeare now makes a staggering offer - to cohabit with Marlowe part of the year in London.

In the end friendship and betrayal are two sides of the same coin, with fatal consequences.

Daniel Evans directs these two powerful actors with clear-cut energy, bringing out passion and thoughtfulness in equal measure. The action is played on a pretty bare stage with banks of about 150 stage lights blazing down from three sides in Neil Austin’s uncompromising lighting design.

But it’s for the sexual dynamics between Bluemel and Gatwa that this 90-minute piece will be remembered - and you won’t see finer acting on the London stage.

Born With Teeth is at Wyndham’s Theatre until 1 November.