EDWARD II
By Christopher Marlowe. Directed by Patrick Wang. Set design by David J. Miller. Lighting by Nathaniel Packard. Costumes by Amanda Mujica. Sound by Michael Dalby. With Mark Saturno, Patrick Zeller, Birgit Huppuch, Kent French, Dev Luthra, Bern Budd, and G. Zachariah White. Presented by Pet Brick Productions at the Tremont Theater, Wednesday through Sunday through April 29.

Celia Wren observed recently in the New York Times that Christopher Marlowe, “the great also-ran of Elizabethan literature,” is enjoying a comeback. Among the signs: a still ongoing complete Marlowe cycle at New York’s Target Margin Theater Company and the announcement that Johnny Depp will appear as the playwright, opposite Jude Law’s Shakespeare, in an upcoming film. But “comeback” is too strong: when was Marlowe last away? Reputed gay and blaspheming, known to be a spy, killed at 29 in a tavern — with such credentials, this son of the Renaissance found a respectful audience in the 20th century, which named him honorary Romantic, Angry Young Man, and punk. It’s now standard to read his work as a cry of revolt: in his erotic poem Hero and Leander and his plays Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine the Great, and The Jew of Malta, he offers images of outsized libidos and egos in conflict with a paltry and repressive world order.

Marlowe’s most recent incarnation has been as a symbol of gay pride. Edward II is Exhibit A, but it’s an ambiguous one. The play is about a king whose passion for a man sets him at odds with England’s nobles, who work his downfall. Marlowe emphasizes the subversiveness of Edward’s commitment to love, his lavishing of titles and rank on friends of low birth, his ćstheticism (the verse is sparingly but tellingly adorned with marks of the playwright’s classical education). But far from ensuring a positive response to Edward, Marlowe portrays a selfish and immature tyrant: given to private pleasures, overquick to invective when crossed, and hopeless at keeping the realm together.

Pet Brick’s Edward II faces the problem of the play with a complexity that’s almost perverse in its fairness. In Mark Saturno’s performance, Edward is as ignorant of the audience’s sympathy as he is of the nobles’. And the latter group come off as forces of reason. It would be simple enough to slant the play to make the nobles look like power-mad homophobes, but instead director Patrick Wang lets their avowals of tolerance and moderation pass at face value. He shows them as they see themselves: guardians of a system that would work fine for everyone if the king just did his part.

Edward II is no paean to romantic love. Marlowe’s muse, which soars in his other plays, is grounded throughout most of Edward II: the pentameter is severe in its trimness, the vocabulary clear and pragmatic, the syntax orderly and uncomplicated. Amid such dryness, the play’s few shoots of grandeur need to be vigorously and lovingly tended. But though Saturno (who speaks verse well) captures the rage and the compulsiveness in Edward’s tirades, he wrongly thinks that when Edward tells the sun to speed up or slow down, the poetry can take care of itself. And in the key role of Gaveston, Edward’s lover, Patrick Zeller is appropriately conceited but insufficiently inspired at delivering some of the play’s most inspired language. When Gaveston dies, Edward is subdued — a touch that’s in keeping with Saturno’s characterization (his Edward often seems less moved by deep feeling than in love with his own reactions) but undercuts the play.

On the other hand, Wang’s production and Saturno’s performance rise to the task of conveying Edward’s anguished struggles with the “strange despairing thoughts” that plague him in his downfall. The highlight of the show is the scene in which, forced to give up the crown, Edward realizes that he’s also facing the loss of his identity. But carelessness toward the emotional dimension of the text cripples the developing relationship between the neglected Queen Isabella and the ambitious Lord Mortimer: the two have little chemistry and sometimes hardly notice each other on stage — a problem I attribute less to the actors (Birgit Huppuch and Kent French) than to the director’s keeping the lid on them.

The supporting cast is quite good, with Dev Luthra, Bern Budd, and Bill Salem outstanding as members of the nobility and clergy. Apart from some masked interludes that slow the action and some unnecessary gimmickry with the PA system (Gaveston’s recapture is played as an audio flashback when the event is reported to the king), the physical aspects of the production are on track. The Stonehenge-inspired set is elegant though not fully exploited by the staging, which tends to cramp the nobles in sluggish groupings. Sticking nicely to the medićval, costume designer Amanda Mujica outdoes herself with the queen’s several dresses. A stylized battle scene is picturesque and brief enough to be engaging.

Those familiar with the play will want to know how Edward’s death, one of the most notorious in drama, is managed. Here, as elsewhere in the production, Wang’s direction goes overboard in its restraint. Not only is the physical horror toned down, but the scene also falls short in ghastly atmosphere. I liked Mortimer’s severed head, though.

Issue Date: April 19-26, 2001