rewrite this title in Arabic Atrocity makes a mockery of civility in the RSC’s seething Edward II — review

Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Two coffins centre stage, two dead monarchs, two sons pitched into tragedy. Both of the RSC’s major new productions begin with funereal solemnity: Hamlet (in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) starts with a burial at sea; Edward II (in the Swan Theatre) opens with the dead king lying in state. Audience members are even invited to file around the coffin, as they did with the late Elizabeth II.But beneath the pomp and ceremony — in both plays — seethes murderous discontent. In Edward II that will end with a hideous regicide in a cell swamped with sewage — an atrocity that makes a mockery of those initial displays of civility. Trimmed down to 100 minutes, Daniel Raggett’s rare revival of Marlowe’s classic (the first at the RSC for 35 years) has the slick velocity of a contemporary thriller, putting the play’s queer love and vicious homophobia squarely centre stage.It’s chilling: a stark account of surging prejudice and naked self-interest and of the speed with which brutality can take hold. It’s also sobering: a 16th-century tragedy about a 14th-century king that asks uncomfortable questions about prejudice in today’s world. At its centre is a riveting performance from Daniel Evans, the RSC’s joint artistic director. Evans’s Edward begins as deeply alienated and fatally truculent. At his father’s funeral he bristles, his stiff military uniform seeming to hang heavy upon him. His first thought on accession is to recall his lover, Gaveston, banished by the old king, and to deluge him in gifts and titles. One of Evans’s skills is to suggest that, had his Edward been allowed to be himself — been allowed to love whom he loved — he might have made a shrewder leader. As it is, he realises too late how easily his adoration of Gaveston (who, in Eloka Ivo’s performance, returns that affection) is exploited by peers on the make.And, while snobbery plays a part in the nobles’ plots to destroy the lower-born Gaveston, the focus of this staging is homophobia. It’s queer love as much as sex that rattles them; they recoil as Edward, transported by joy, clings to Gaveston. There’s a brutal, violent assertion of a certain sort of masculinity, which finds its nadir in the murder of Edward — as ugly a display of homophobic hatred as one can imagine and carried out unsparingly here.But the play is also a study in flawed leadership and in the corrupting nature of power. Evans offers a rich and complex portrayal of Edward: brittle, stubborn and rash at the outset, he acquires a moving wisdom in his imprisonment. Meanwhile, the more reasonable of the peers reel as Enzo Cilenti’s thuggish Mortimer carves his way towards the top.There’s a cost to the cuts: some gear-changes feel very abrupt and there is little sense of a wider society or the impact of the chaos at court. But this stark staging, powerfully sculpted by Tim Lutkin’s dramatic lighting, offers an unflinching account of prejudice and its proximity to the surface. It’s eloquently expressed in Leslie Travers’ set: beneath that splendid dais on which the old king’s coffin was displayed lurks the filthy pit in which Edward will die.★★★★☆To April 5, rsc.org.uk