EDWARD'S PRESENTS. To 24 January.

London

EDWARDS PRESENTS
by Sally Llewellyn

Union Theatre To 24 January 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 0207 261 9876
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 January

A silly idea intriguingly worked out.Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford did not write the Shakespeare plays. Nor as this play suggests - was he a poet who used theatre hack Shakespeare to sex up his verse with theatrical oomph. However many clever anagrams are detected by the apparently infinite number of would-be detectives monkeying around with the plays, it's mere social snobbery to suggest Stratford's man who came from the grammar-school educated middle-classes that have produced virtually all England's major writers (Byron, as usual, excepted) couldn't have written Hamlet et al.

I'm sure Sally Llewellyn isn't snobbish. She's written a fascinating story, though her narrative, hopping along in regulation short scenes, doesn't explore every situation fully. Given the number of new plays where you wish things would get moving, it says a lot for her writing that you're sometimes left wanting more.

Her Elizabethans are fascinating, from the sinister manipulator Burghley to Shaksper (never mind the spelling, the playwright didn't), body bent in eagerness or subservience till he pores over a script and certainty takes command. Phil Sealey provides a vivid, zestful characterisation through his West Midlands whine (stage Brummie seems to have replaced stage Oirish these days).

But Oxford's the centre, his open desire for loose-living commoner Anne Vavasor overwhelmed when he becomes besotted with the handsome young Earl of Southampton dedicatee of some of Shakespeare's fondest love poetry. Southampton's casual departure blows Oxford's mind, leaving him mentally disarrayed just when his daughter's marrying her long-time love, newly established as Earl of Derby.

Earwig Arts' production is unevenly acted, but the main points drive their way through Kirrie Wratten's hesitant if functionally competent production. Philip Tsaras conveys Oxford's delight in Anne, his obsession and devastation over Sebastian Faber's insouciantly beautiful Wriothesley. The one supernatural figure, Lewis Barfoot's Puckish sprite, is used well, whisperingly intensifying de Vere's feelings.

Tsaras makes clear Llewellyn's key point: that A Midsummer Night's Dream, written as a wedding present for Oxford's daughter, became inhabited by the devastating nightmare of his personal life. I hope Ms Llewellyn is sending her script to directors round the country; this play deserves wider production.

Lord Burghley: Tim Seely
Bess Vere: Helen Abbott
Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford: Philip Tsaras
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton: Sebastian Faber
Anne Vavasor/Queen Elizabeth: Emily Daler
An Androgymous Fairty: Lewis Barfoot
Will Stanley, Earl of Derby: Adso Brown
William Shaksper: Phil Sealey

Director: Kirrie Wratten
Designer: Jane Churchill
Lighting: Steve Miller
Sound: Malcolm Blackmoor
Costume: Brizan Versteeg, Alison Rasch

2004-01-19 00:16:50