On paper, it sounds a fine idea: to film all the plays by Christopher Marlowe with star casts including Dominic West, Alan Cox, Talulah Riley, Nancy Carroll and the late, great Adrian Schiller. It is the brainchild of a producer-director, Ray Mia, who clearly has a passion for Marlowe. But having seen a video recording of Doctor Faustus at – where else? – the Marlowe theatre in Canterbury, and dipped into the versions of Tamburlaine and The Massacre at Paris, I find myself wondering who it is all for? In an age when Eng Lit is being marginalised as a subject of academic study, is the world aching for a massive Marlowe marathon?
The project was unusually conceived. In 2022 the Malthouse theatre at the King’s School, Canterbury – Marlowe’s alma mater – was taken over by actors, directors and musicians to present all of Marlowe’s plays. The idea was to rehearse each one for four days and then to do script-in-hand performances on the Friday and Saturday before a live audience (I am told three people turned up for the Saturday matinee of Tamburlaine). Mia lays great stress on the use of “immersive audio technology”. But, slightly to the surprise of the cast and directors, a video recording was also made of the performances; and it was this version of Doctor Faustus that I saw last week.
