Life and death of a troubled monarch

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“EDWARD II”
Royal Exchange, Manchester

CHRISTOPHER Marlowe’s drama of the king who wanted it all and eventually got it where he didn’t like it, as it were, has been presented once before at the Exchange, 25 years ago.

I don’t propose to go on about it, but the two productions are remarkable for their similarities and yet also for their differences.

Both were/are wildly out of their time: Hytner’s mixed Middle-Ages England with an Ortonesque taste for the debauched, while current director Toby Frow goes for the 1950s.

The first had a complex and spectacular set while this has an almost bare, stepped stone floor (and at one point, an open sewer).

But where they diverge most strongly is in interpretation: Hytner went for subtlety while Frow couldn’t be more open about the king’s homosexuality (or more likely bisexuality).

Marlowe’s fascinating but slightly repetitive work is about a king who couldn’t play king; a man controlled by emotion and love rather than the cold-heartedness of a wartime leader. Hytner’s Edward always left doubt about his sexuality and later, when treated mercilessly by his captors, became a figure demanding tremendous sympathy. This king wasn’t a hedonist but a man torn between what he wanted and the job fate had landed on him.

In Frow’s version we are left in no doubt what Edward wants: Gaveston (Samuel Collings), not his wife and not even, except when it suits him, his son. His treatment of the quartet of barons (David Collings, Jolyon Coy, Hugh Simon and Jonathan Keeble) is exasperating then openly hostile; his treatment of his wife (Emma Cunniffe) simply cruel in pursuit of his young lover.

The trouble with this approach is that when trapped in Berkeley Castle, his eloquence on the subject of his kingdom comes across more like whining. Ultimately our sympathy is won by Chris New’s strong performance as the condemned king, finally calm and stately where before he seemed merely selfish. His ugly death is rather well done, though.

This isn’t an entirely satisfactory production — you could argue that the Thirties might have been a better period, when another Edward was having trouble deciding between love and state.

Having made the choice, the period is set almost entirely by costume, since the words have little resonance — and the sight of Fifties policemen chasing besuited barons and earls across the stage tends to set the wrong note.