Born With Teeth

 It's always enjoyable to see some drama at a playhouse in some charming place. So taking in Born With Teeth at the Mendocino Theatre Company on the California North Coast turned out to be a fine surprise of the positive kind. This play by Liz Duffy-Adams has already been in some prominent places--it premiered at the Alley Theater in Houston and then played the Guthrie in Minneapolis: two outstanding regional theaters. Next stop is likely to be New York, and exactly where there remains unclear. Perhaps one of the prime workshop theaters--N.Y. Theatre Workshop or the Public Theater--in preparation for one of the hardest nut to crack--a Broadway production of a drama.

But first things first. This is a two-character, three-segment drama. Characters: two 16th century playwrights named Will Shakespeare and Christopher (Kit) Marlowe. They were rivals, of course, in the amazing and challenging Elizabethan theatre world, but also colleagues, and here, were charged with working together on the three-play series that emerged as the three parts of Henry the Sixth.

Henry VI is not the best known of Shakespeare's plays. I saw a condensed verson at Vancouver's Shakespeare on the Beach some years ago and what made it exciting for me was the emergence in the final part of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for his own play, Richard III.

But there's scant discussion of that project in this play. Shakespeare is still a newcomer but already showing signs of greatness. Marlowe is more established but more corrupt. He wants Shakespeare to do all the writing, which he could then reshape as he would see best. Shakespeare, demeaned by Marlowe as no more than an unsuccessful actor trying to recover his status as a playwright, is already far beyond the young man from the provinces he is seen to be in Marlowe's more experienced but no more perceptive eyes.

The first act takes time to develop. It will need some work. But in the second, these are segments that flow together without any intermission other than a short blackout and renewal after each segment, the plot thickens and is resolved mightily in the third. The theater's program has a piece explaining the conspiratorial atmosphere of London theater in the Elizabethan age. Playwrights needed protectors and sponsors from the nobility to avoid being arrested, tortured, or murdered.

The play shows how Shakespeare managed to operate in this sordid and wildly challenging world. Mention is made that a contemporary of both men--Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy was a successful play of these times--apparently was destroyed by these vicious elements. You might recall that his play is recalled by a footnoted line in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. 

Conspiracies of all sorts abounded; Marlowe was involved up to his ears. He seems both oblivious to the possibility that Shakespeare may be more adept and informed than he appears, but also intent on maintaining some rapport because Marlowe sees a major figure arising. Brady Voss and Randall Jaynes carry the burden and opportunity of a two-character play forward. Beth Craven's direction was spot on, as was fight coordinator Noah Lucé.