'Born With Teeth' review — Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel are a perfect pair in this sexually charged sparring match

Read our review of Liz Duffy Adams's Born With Teeth, about playwrights Shakespeare and Marlowe, now in performances at Wyndham's Theatre to 1 November.

“Does my flesh dazzle you?” purrs Ncuti Gatwa’s impish Christopher “Kit” Marlowe to fellow playwright William Shakespeare (Edward Bluemel). “Yes!” the audience may be tempted to cry out: Born With Teeth is a seriously steamy cat-and-mouse game, as American dramatist Liz Duffy Adams places these two brilliant men in one room so we can watch the sparks fly.

Handily for Adams’s purposes, no one knows for sure what the relationship was between Marlowe, who was the rock star of the age before his tragically early death at 29, and up-and-comer Shakespeare. Were they rivals, artistic collaborators, friends, lovers? Might one have fatally betrayed the other?

There’s a little of everything in Adams’s thoroughly entertaining sparring match, which mixes period and contemporary speech. Marlowe talks about getting a “scholarship to uni”, but there are also countless knowing references – whether a Hamlet quote or a running joke about Shakespeare’s fondness for puns.

The action takes place in the backroom of a London tavern, beginning in 1591, after Marlowe agrees to team up with Shakespeare on history play Henry VI (the work’s actual authorship is hotly debated). At times they sound like contemporary Hollywood scriptwriters, moaning about their looming deadline and having to produce sequels. “I’m using that!” they both shout when they come up with the titular line.

There are differences in philosophy: Marlowe is dismissive of Shakespeare’s crowd-pleasing, earthy realism. Both consult the historian Holinshed, however Marlowe insists they mustn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. He’s also shrewd about how some characters will be received, arguing Joan of Arc can’t be written sympathetically since she’s Catholic and “f---ing French”.

Yet the worldly Marlowe can take risks, frankly expressing his sexuality and atheist views, because he has cultivated a wealthy patron and parallel career as a spy. Shakespeare, who is suspected of being a Catholic traitor, wants to hide behind his work, not have it reveal him, so that he can safely support his family. Adams frames their society as a dangerous police state under an authoritarian ruler.

Both actors sink their teeth into this juicy material. Gatwa is a charismatic force of nature as Marlowe, whether snorting drugs, swishing his cape like a matador, stroking his “throbbing quill”, or leaping across the table to pounce on Shakespeare – who compares flirting with him to “petting a leopard”. Yet he also wonders, poignantly, if his work will grant him immortality.

Bluemel gives us an effectively hesitant young Bard who grows in confidence and stature as his artistic genius emerges. An electrifying exchange sees the pair acting out Shakespeare’s farewell scene in Henry VI – art that reveals real emotion, proving the power of his approach.

Daniel Evans’s dynamic RSC production features skin-tight leather versions of Elizabethan dress (by Joanna Scotcher) and flashes of torture in video interludes. The latter is slightly overused; it’s a shame, too, that Adams so often spells out the shifting dynamics in the dialogue, when surely these great poets were capable of subtext.

But this is an accessible romp that honours Shakespeare’s populist spirit, jubilantly reclaims queer history, and explores a literary mystery that continues to fascinate.

Born With Teeth is at Wyndham's Theatre to 1 November. Book Born With Teeth tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Born With Teeth (Photos by Johan Persson)