London Theater Review Part 1: Political Dramas Four Centuries Apart

Shipwreck

Written by Anne Washburn

Directed by Rupert Goold

The Almeida Theater, London

February 25, 2019

Edward II

Written by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

Directed by Nick Bagnall

Starring Tom Stuart and Colin Ryan (Young Spencer, Edward III) 

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, London

February 27, 3019

On my trip to London I had a chance to see two plays about failed leaders, written about four hundred years apart. The tone of the plays was very different, but each author uses the failed leader as a springboard for societal critique. Christopher Marlowe’s Tudor version of the life of failed medieval king Edward II (1284-1327) depicts his vices honestly, and with some compassion, but equally critiques the society around him. American playwright Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck comically pillories Donald Trump as a satanic figure, but critiques the inconsistencies in his liberal critics.  

Anne Washburn has written sixteen plays in twenty years, most performed off Broadway or in regional theaters. It was strange that I would need to go to London to see such a ruthless Trump critique as her new play Shipwreck…where are such plays in liberal New York or San Francisco? The play alternates between fantasy sequences and a party of New York liberal 40-50-somethings. The group/party episodes take up most of the play, and feel like an update of The Big Chill or The Breakfast Club, where similar yet different people hash out their beliefs and differences. In this case they all think they are Trump opponents, and much of the play is taken up by talky sequences about MeToo#, immigration, white guilt over slavery, and other familiar topics. But near the end of the play one of these angst-ridden liberals comes out as a Trump voter, feeling that the whole system is corrupt, and a disruptor like Trump was a worthwhile gamble. This admission is a real disruption, and brings out some excellent anger and true feelings, not so couched in liberal platitudes and code words. The surreal fantasy episodes were hysterical, and featured Mr. Trump in satanic garb with golden body paint. In the first act he wrestles George W. Bush for the soul of the republican party (literally, with grappling on stage). Later acts as a devilish torturer (or tempter of Christ in the wilderness?)  to ex-FBI director James Comey (foreground below), who sits in a dungeon strapped to a torture chair. 

He alternately turns on charm, bribery, fury, and irrationality, pretty much just like the real president. The actor here did look far better in a golden bikini than our president would, however. The set was a rotating circular platform that sometimes looked like a fiery torture pit, other times a rustic dining room table. The lighting and sound design was impressive, especially in the hell/Trump sequences. The play was a liberal venting outcry and a liberal self-critique. It was very entertaining, even if it covered no real new ground and provoked no new insights in me. It went on a bit long, and, like all of these group-psych plays, the talking became tiresome at times, but I think it’s a play that would entertain in most US cities.

Edward II is a fascinating play about  a king (1284-1327) whose rather short (twenty year) reign was abruptly ended by a revolt of the English barons, based on the presumed influence in court of the lesser ranking noble Piers Galveston, as well as of other young male favorites of Edward. This undercut the rich barons’ accustomed influence over national policy. The juicy part that attracted Marlowe was the gay theme. Most scholars assume that Edward’s “favorites” were male sexual partners, and homosexuality is what gives the play some added interest over the usual plottings and political intrigues common in Tudor history plays. This is played up actively (if not too erotically) by director Nick Bagnall. My other experience with this play, in San Francisco, was much more overt, beginning with a gay gang-bang before the play even starts—there was nothing that wild here. Marlowe’s apparently accurate depiction of Edward’s secret execution, in which a flaming hot poker is put up his rectum, is described by some sources as a way of executing without leaving evidence of an execution (as would, say, a stabbing or beheading). This seems a bit farfetched. Even though homosexuality was apparently not so big a deal to the Tudors, it certainly seems that the death-by-anal poker must have been a mocking way to execute a homosexual king. In the end, Edward’s young son becomes king (Edward III, 1312-1377), and went on to a long an illustrious reign, including starting the successful Hundred Years War with France, leaving his father as a forgotten footnote to history, except in this play. A very handsome Tom Stuart was excellent as Edward, and the very young-appearing 30-year-old actor Colin Ryan ably played one of his young lovers, and later in the play, his teenage son. Both actors stood out for their expressive fluency with the Tudor prosody that made the play easy to follow and always entertaining. Marlowe’s text lacks the learnedness and high poetic quality of Shakespeare, but his sense of plotting, pacing, and character were excellent. I understand why he was perhaps the most popular of the Tudor playwrights.

Amidst all the plotting and lurid carnage, I enjoyed the play’s subthemes that address how much the king’s subjects should respect his office vs. wanting his demise due to their policy (or personal) differences with him. This resonates today, as the press (and many of the public) seem reluctant to fully criticize a sitting president because of the “dignity of the office”. But what if the leader abases that dignity? As presented by Marlowe, Edward II seemed far less erratic than our president, just a bit too attached to his boy toys and a life of decadence. Much of English history is about the evolution from king-as-divine ruler to king-as-ceremonial figurehead. Except for one short revolutionary period, they seem to have accomplished this transition sanely, mostly without the guillotine or riots. I suspect one reason for this was that playwrights like Shakespeare and Marlowe were constantly commenting on the government, using past kings such as Edward II as prototypes for their critiques.  It seems like this model might be worth resurrecting for our modern era. We produce many plays/movies about successful presidents like Lincoln, but these become hagiographies, not reflective critiques. Perhaps we need to bring back some bad presidents like Andrew Johnson or James Buchanan to see how they failed, and perhaps learn some lessons. It’s a model that worked for Tudor playwrights.

Notes: The play was set in the Wanamaker Playhouse, the beautiful indoor theater of Shakespeare’s Globe. It’s a reproduction of an actual theater of the time. You are seated among elaborate wooden pillars, and the stage is lit by candles only. This makes for very intimate theater, and allows excellent effects as we moved from dungeons to medieval castle halls. The theater has a variety of ways it can use candles, ranging from footlights to side lights, to chandeliers, and this was done very creatively in the service of the play.

Shakespeare’s Globe has certainly entered this millennium. Looking at their play schedule, there is a Richard II played exclusively by black women, and an all-woman cast in Emelia, a time-travel play about the supposed inspiration as the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets (in the play she resents the labeling of her life by the reputation of a man). Apparently, the old custom of men playing women’s roles is back, but joined by women playing men’s roles, as was the case with two of the dukes in Edward II. They spoke in husky voices, probably just as the men playing women in Shakespeare’s day would raise the pitch of theirs. Edward’s young son was played by a rather exotic-looking waiflike actor who is half Thai, half English, giving him a rather feminine look appropriate to this role, and allowing him to portray a character much younger than his actual age. All these experiments may rattle the traditionalists, but I find them pretty easy to adjust to, as long as the acting is of the superb quality maintained at Shakespeare’s Globe.