Edward II
The Swan Theatre
Playing until 5 April
The RSC has two great plays and two exciting productions of them playing at the same time in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and The Swan. Both Hamlet and Marlowe’s Edward II are as interesting as we have seen for a while at the RSC and both have exciting, innovative and theatrically effective aspects to them.
The play certainly begins with a bang. Audience members sitting in the stalls are invited to go up on stage to pay their respects to the dead king in his coffin draped in ceremonious flags and regalia and what we see first is what looks like an ordered ritualistic funeral. Immediately that is over this pageant turns to a gay sauna from which Edward will choose two of his supporters. What a contrast. State pageantry and seedy subculture juxtaposed. We know we are in for a roller coaster ride.
The play’s deft cutting means that production has a very clear narrative line, focussing on the situation between King Edward and his love Gaveston. I say situation because we find out very little about the relationship between the two men. Instead we follow the twists and turns of Daniel Evans’s King Edward and his courtiers who are all jealous of the king’s liaison with commoner Gaveston, not only a commoner but also black. Opening in a week when we witnessed President Trump change his mind almost every day the play suddenly became surprisingly topical politically. This was accentuated by the late decision (made after the programmes had been printed) to present the 1 hour 40 minutes play without an interval. The changes in the attitude of the nobles’ attitude to Edward and to banishing Gaveston come thick and fast so we can see that their behaviour is governed entirely by political opportunism and self-interest rather than any kind of logic or morality.
The result of this is that the play is remarkably bleak. I have seen productions before when our sympathies varied throughout and where we were not quite sure of what to make of what was going on. Not so here. Eloka Ivo plays Gaveston in such a way that he is a pawn in a much wider political game. Ruta Gedmintas’s Queen Isabella is more motivated by opportunism than with genuine love for Mortimer. Of the nobles only Emilio Doorgasingh’s Pembroke shows any personal loyalty and care. The rest of them, including the clergy, are cold and pretty vile. Edward, too, exhibits moments of hypocrisy and lack of morality.
Raggett does not shy away from issues of gayness, race and political behaviour. The end, with the famous/infamous scene of Edward’s assassination by Lightborn (Jacob James Beswick) takes place in a hideously degrading prison swamp and we feel appalled at the way the king, now reduced to unaccommodated man, is treated.
Raggett ends the play, though, with decisive and kingly authority when the boy Prince Edward (played the night I saw it by Freddy Beck) takes matters in hand, acting in a way that no other character is able to do during the course of what we witness.
This exciting, disturbing and chilling production is one I shall remember for a long time. Come and see it and enjoy a stay at Moss Cottage where you will have a lovely time and receive a warm welcome.