This one is bloody brilliant, probably the best I've seen at the Arts West in the post-COVID years.
It's a two-person play. Shakespeare and Marlowe, at the start of Shakespeare's career. Marlowe is the established superstar of the era, and supplements his writing with adventures in spycraft and larceny, trusting to his patron (and his own sense of self-preservation) to keep him from prison and torture. Young Will is an actor by trade, but would rather disappear within his work and not make any waves. Because the Elizabethan England as conjured by Adams is an authoritarian police state, its oppressions covering for "endless wars and bad harvests" with a continual hunt for foreign agents, traitors, and Catholics.
The characters are the same age, but Marlowe (Michael Monicatti) is more experienced in the world and its double-dealing. Egotistic, talented, and sure-footed, he plays the mentor and the seducer, seducing both for his world of spycraft and sexually. Young Shakespeare (Ricky Spaulding) is in comparison the country mouse, with the family back in the hinterland that he wants to keep fed. For Shakespeare, writing is a way to support his family, for Marlowe writing is a flashy sideline while proving his true worth for his elite masters.
Recently scholars have done the analysis and determined that Marlowe and Shakespeare did team up on what has been previously credited as Shakespeare's first works - Henry VI (parts 1, 2, and 3). They can track which parts are Marlowe's and which parts are Shakespeare's. And that becomes the frame upon which the twain's relationship is based - Marlowe struts, pouts, and tempts, while Shakespeare tries to keep things on a business level, denying his own interest, and worried about repercussions.
The stages itself is simple and does not get in the way - a diagonal thrust platform dominated by a single large tavern table where the two are supposedly working. It is both constrained, keeping the actors in the same cage, and open, giving them the ability to range and rage around, across, and onto the table itself. Some sight lines at stage left might be obscured, but it is minimalism in the modern theatric sense, and works perfectly.
And it is all fantastic - the actors fully embrace their parts, every line carries several layers of subtext, and every emotion lands. It is an excellent presentation, and well-worth getting out to the wilds of West Seattle (where, I will note, they've changed the parking procedures behind the theater AGAIN) in order to take it in. It is very much modern theatre, all muscle and sinew, intent on challenging the viewer and demanding they keep up.
Got see it. More later.
