EARLY SHAKESPEARE AND THE LATE MARLOWE
by Michael Moriarty
Directed by Richard Halberstadt
Cast:
Paul Collins, Clifford Overton, Sue Sotheran, Simon Surtees
THE AUTHOR
Michael Moriarty had been a member of The Questors for about six years when Early Shakespeare and the Late Marlowe was selected for the 1977 Festival. A former teacher who had subsequently worked in computer programming, he was active at The Questors as both actor and director and had also worked with Questabout, the theatre’s Theatre-in-Education company. His musical abilities were regularly employed at the theatre and during Festival 18 he also appeared with Julia Cooke in a programme of Elizabethan-style music in the foyer.
Early Shakespeare and the Late Marlowe was his first play; although the Festival programme jokingly described it as his “first and only” play, Moriarty expressed the hope that he would write further work.
A light-hearted theatrical fantasy, Early Shakespeare and the Late Marlowe brings the young William Shakespeare face to face with the ghost of Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare is having an affair with Miranda, whose family wants her married elsewhere, while his patron Henry Wriothesley faces similar matrimonial pressure from his mother. The conveniently dead Marlowe, once Miranda’s lover and Henry’s friend, arrives with a proposed solution which proves less straightforward than expected. From this comic intrigue develops an imagined relationship between Shakespeare and Marlowe and a playful examination of writing, acting and the nature of theatre itself. The play treats literary history irreverently rather than academically, using anachronism, theatrical jokes and a succession of twists to speculate humorously about the two dramatists and their art.
PHOTOS
PRESS RESPONSE
Critical opinion was sharply divided over Michael Moriarty’s first play. Claudia Cooke in the Shepherds Bush Gazette found it a swift, imaginative and directly appealing comedy, displaying an acute sense of humour. She praised Paul Collins’s Marlowe, Simon Surtees’s Shakespeare, Clifford Overton’s two comic roles and Sue Sotheran’s versatility, regarding the play as a valid Festival contribution which promised well for Moriarty’s future.
Jackie Whitburn in the Ealing Gazette, however, thought that its imaginative invention had produced a slow-moving and tedious play. She found the repeatedly appearing chamber pot especially tiresome, although she praised Collins’s powerful performance and found Sotheran and Overton effective.
The other reviewers largely supported Whitburn’s reservations. Michael Coveney in the Financial Times described the play as an “over-extended fantasy” about Marlowe returning from the dead to resolve Shakespeare’s sexual and professional entanglements.
Kitharistes in Questopics saw it as a piece of vaudeville which offered plentiful costume, movement and theatrical business but remained tedious and uncertain in purpose. The reviewer wondered whether it was intended to say something about theatre, acting or role-playing, concluding that good lighting, costumes and activity could not by themselves “make a play”.
Thus, although Cooke responded enthusiastically to its comedy and performances, the prevailing judgment was that Moriarty’s lively theatrical ideas had not been shaped into a sufficiently coherent or engaging drama.
The Financial Times
The Ealing Gazette
The Shepherds Bush Gazette
Questopics
QUESTORS ARCHIVES
EARLY SHAKESPEARE AND THE LATE MARLOWE