This is the year's most successful sexing up. Fifth in the Globe's single-sex 'Regime Change' series, Edward II plays gloriously on sexuality and gender without trampling on the complexity and ambiguity of Marlowe's text. The production brims with eroticism from the moment it kicks off with Gerald Kyd's Gaveston prancing round the stage like a lithe hairy satyr in curly locks and yellow toga, snogging a purple King Edward in full view of the wonderfully prim bishops and nobles. And all in front of naked-buttocked tapestries showing brazen Lena and his swan alongside Ganymede and his eagle. 
      But Timothy Walker's subtle production is not an excuse for a crude sex show, nor is Liam Brennan's thoughtful Edward all about homosexuality, as modern eyes are tempted to suppose. Marlowe is concerned with a public world turned upside-down by the elevation of common favourites, patronage thrown to the wind, and by the absence and distraction of the king's physical body in an age when its presence was so vital to the health of the realm. The private agony is of a man as human, lonely, and irritated with the burdens of leadership as Mark Rylance's Richard II, and each suffers the violent consequences (and growing eloquence) of becoming a king too late. 
      Neither Marlowe nor the Men's Company pretend to have all the answers. We are on the lovers' side, and yet as Gaveston schemes betrayal from the word go, and as Spencer comes tumbling after him in Edward's affections, we sense more schoolboy crush than heartfelt passion. We shout boo to the stuffy peers, but see their point as Normandy invades and throws Edward into stark contrast with the lion kings who precede and succeed him. The all-male cast beautifully points up the ambiguities in their sumptuous Globe costumes: Isabelle looks the giant virile dominant force she must become, the battle scenes are performed as camp dances, and the red-hot poker, symbol of the play's ultimate violence and sexuality, is left to the imagination.
Maya Lester