What is the full truth behind Christopher Marlowe’s death? The actor playing him, Rob McDermott, would like to know but it can’t be easy when the director is slating him from the rafters. It’s one of the instances in this production by Five Gallants where the self awareness of postdramatic theatre is getting in the way of conveying a greater struggle with truth.

The death of the playwright Marlowe has haunted the literary consciousness for centuries. The story has it that he was stabbed above the eye by businessman Ingrim Frizer in a tavern brawl (over the bill, reportedly). But with evidence suggesting that the writer was a spy in Francis Walsingham’s intelligence industry, what’s suspicious is the presence of two government agents at the time of his killing. Was Marlowe not playing ball?

It might demystify the hidden world of Elizabethan espionage to reduce it to a stage of fumbling players but this theatricalising of the performance event is undercut by the constant lunge for laughs, with some industry gags for measure (“Have you never heard of an aside?”). More unfortunate is the flat delivery of some of Marlowe’s finest lines, as well as some gorgeous gems from playwright Stephen McDermott.
Rob McDermott slickly portrays Marlowe as a principled man but the higher dramatic note of his fascination with truth isn’t hit. Instead he goes down in a Mortal Kombat-cued skirmish that ends with him flattened by a brawny co-actor. The Secret Art is to use the half nelson.

Star rating: ★★