Love a good two-hander, me. Especially when you’re dealing with a cast as good as Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel. An effective three-act play of the relationship between Shakespeare and Marlowe, that has a lot of fun playing with the facts and assumptions and all of that. I really enjoyed it, but an interesting phenomenon struck me in it, which is that a lot of the implicit and indeed overt homoeroticism got laughs from the audience in a way that I don’t think was particularly intended. And it was interesting that this was coming from a predominantly younger audience too. I think more along the lines of it being, shall we say, a somewhat fandom-oriented audience rather than “well obviously men don’t kiss so this is meant to be funny”, but yes. Odd in 2025. Gatwa and Bluemel are excellent in the roles, and make for a fascinating exploration of what that relationship could have been like. Theres a perfectly balanced bit in the third act between subtlety and on-the-nose relating it to Covid, the theatres closing and Shakespeare rushing back from the countryside to the plague-filled city to see Marlowe. Not a major plot point, but looms lightly in the background.