Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Daniel Raggett’s hit-and-miss Marlowe production has wonderful moments but errs on the side of excess in its staging of the king’s doomed love affair

Edward II’s love for Piers Gaveston is not what loses him his throne and life in Christopher Marlowe’s 1591 double tragedy (I’ll come back to that “double”). The king’s homosexuality is defended, though not approved, by one of his stoutest enemies, here spoken by his side-changing brother, Kent: “The mightiest kings have had their minions… [also] the wisest men.” What rouses Edward’s nobles to fury is his squandering of the country’s wealth on his lover while common people suffer, foreign foes defeat English armies, and their own rights are trampled on.

Edward’s obsession with Gaveston, in Daniel Evans’s intense but patchy performance, is an unquenchable addiction. Everything is an irritant that is not his lover. When Gaveston is absent, Edward paces restlessly, eyes searching for the longed-for one’s arrival. Arrived, Eloka Ivo’s self-centred Gaveston is leapt upon, wrapped into the king’s arms and legs, hungrily kissed, touched, held onto.