The Marlowe Papers

Otherplace At The Basement, Kensington Street, Brighton, Tuesday, January 26, to Saturday, January 30

WHEN Otherplace Productions’ artistic director Nicola Haydn met her old friend Ros Barber in the Duke Of Norfolk she was just 27 pages into a book she was writing for her PhD.

Even back then Haydn says she thought Barber's tale would be amazing as a play.

“When I read the final book I couldn’t put it down,” she says, as her live version of Barber’s critically acclaimed work The Marlowe Papers gets its stage debut on Tuesday.

“I had never read anything like it.”

Written entirely in iambic pentameter, The Marlowe Papers imagines Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe didn’t die in a London tavern brawl in 1593.

Instead Kit was spirited away by colleagues in the secret service to live abroad and carry on his work under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.

With the audiobook version of the verse novel stretching to nine and a half hours, Barber and Haydn had to make some judicious edits to get the story across on stage.

And the completed version is very different from the original version, featuring a 16-strong cast, the pair had originally envisioned.

Instead original cast member Jamie Martin performs the story entirely as Marlowe, taking on all the other roles himself.

“The story we are telling is about the man and his journey,” says Haydn.

“He’s struggling and really wants to go home. The first half ends in his exile, and in the second half it’s clear everything is unravelling as more of his friends fall by the wayside, until there is nobody left to save him or redeem him.

“By the end you really do think of him as a man in the pub telling stories on his own.”

She describes the story as a romp, taking in aspects of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes as well as a love story.

“It really takes the audience on some ups and downs,” she says. “It’s beautifully written. It’s in iambic pentameter but it is contemporary language.”

Working alongside Barber meant the pair could make alterations to the story as needed, with Barber producing new linking verse as and when needed.

And rehearsing in the intimacy of The Basement’s second space The Pit allowed Martin free rein of movement.

“He’s all over the place - on the steps and up the walls,” says Haydn. “We will have to rework the piece for black box theatres if we take it on tour. It’s a bare stage piece – he has a cloak, trunk, sword and goblet, it’s all drawn from the words.

“It’s such a great story – you don’t have to know anything about the period or read up on the history to enjoy it. Although there are some in-jokes and references to the plays they are not in the way.”

For Martin himself, whose last role was in World Factory at The Young Vic, the experience of doing a one-man performance was intense.

“There are no other cast members, no fellow performers to rehearse alongside and bond with, to share coffee and gossip,” he says.

“Being solo is daunting and occasionally lonely but also exciting and incredibly invigorating.

“One of many challenges is that I am required to play many different characters, switching in and out of being Kit Marlowe, creating conversations and even a sword fight - where I am effectively talking to and fighting with myself.

“We have tried to go deeper than adopting silly voices and trust me, there’s no false moustaches or wigs or any of that cheap trickery.

“Ros Barber’s words are poetry, each scene is in effect a poem. The text is a gift for any actor. In some ways it feels like taking on a Shakespearean lead.”

As for whether Shakespeare really did write his own plays Haydn hasn’t made up her mind either way.

“The Marlowe Papers is just a story,” she says. “There is a line in the play which asks whether it matters who wrote the plays.

“For some people that’s like heresy – like telling a Catholic that God doesn’t exist.

“I’ve not concerned myself with it – it’s all about getting to the truth of the character. We have just reimagined a changed world – and that’s the story we are telling.”

Starts 8pm, tickets £15/£13.50. Call 01273 987516.