![Jude Owusu](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2018/08/25/tamburlaine1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq5yQLQqeH37t50SCyM4-zeGtT0gK_6EfZT336f62EI5U.jpg?imwidth=680)
Tamburlaine, RSC: a very modern reading of Marlowe's violent play, review
![Jude Owusu](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2018/08/25/tamburlaine1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq5yQLQqeH37t50SCyM4-zeGtT0gK_6EfZT336f62EI5U.jpg?imwidth=680)
When Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine The Great premiered in 1587 – not long after its author had left Cambridge University – it was as if an argosy groaning with riches had docked at the then humble port of English theatre.
“From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits/And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,” began the prologue, boasting of the onrush of something awe-inspiring, “We’ll lead you to the stately tent of War,/Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine / Threat’ning the world with high astounding terms…”
Streaming across the gangplank thrust down by this ambitious young Turk (just 23 when he wrote the play) came line after line of blank verse that glittered with opulent images. Playwrights had deployed blank verse previously but arguably no one had heard such beauty fly from actors’ lips on the London stage before.
![The cast of Tamburlaine](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2018/08/25/tamburlaine2_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq5yQLQqeH37t50SCyM4-zeGtT0gK_6EfZT336f62EI5U.jpg?imwidth=350)
Within two lines of the all-conquering upstart shepherd making his entrance – Edward Alleyn, known for his commanding appearance, created the role – reference is made to “jewels” and “treasure”. The anti-hero’s insatiable acquisitiveness finds its echo in the language piling up around him. The word “gold” occurs numerous times across both parts which have been trimmed to a palatable three hours in this RSC revival, directed by former artistic director Michael Boyd, making his first return to his alma mater.
Marlowe took a terrifying real-life historical figure – Timur, the 14th century Turco-Mongol nomadic seizer of kingdoms, who referred to himself as “the sword of Islam” – and made him a vision of ‘otherness’, the brute abroad much to be feared. No reassuring morality was affixed to his tale of irresistible rise and abrupt fall (Tamburlaine’s epic killing spree comes to a halt with a sudden succumbing to a fatal sickness); the potentate arrogantly puts himself on a pedestal with the gods but his demise barely looks like divine retribution.
It’s a play that demands much of the audience – there’s the threat of being over-stuffed as one act of vanquishment treads on another’s heels – and much too of its leading player, who must somehow charm us, enlist our admiration, and yet also appal us.
The last time Tamburlaine appeared at the RSC, in 1992, Antony Sher delivered the goods with glinting, glittery-eyed malevolence. He let loose a speech while upside down, and even swung down, Tarzan-like, to trounce the Turkish king.
Boyd has cast Jude Owusu, and what’s interesting about the latter’s approach is his refusal to grand-stand. With his imposing gold breast-plate, Owusu has the plausible physicality the role requires but the braggart instinct sits beneath an air that’s deceptively benign. Owusu often smiles, stays calm, as if it were self-evident that those he challenges will fall under his sway. It’s a surprisingly modern reading. In its favour, it chimes with the aura of today’s strong-men such as Assad, who wears his menace in business-like blandness; and something of the sinisterly beaming jihadist terrorist lurks here too.
The downside is that this isn’t an evening of sweat and tears – and even the blood is often applied by brush-stroke, artily daubed on victims as if they’re stunned beasts at an abattoir (hinted at by ware-house-style plastic sheeting in Tom Piper’s austere design, reminiscent of his work with Boyd on the Histories).
We get piteous pleadings that fall on deaf ears, gruesome humiliations – most fabulously Tamburlaine being hauled about by two subjugated kings atop a chariot made from a cage piled inside with crowns. However, it’s not always possible to feel the outrageous violence of the play – or for that matter, the psychological forces raging within Tamburlaine - on the pulse.
Owusu comes most into his own when power ebbs away from his character. Like that other Marlovian anti-hero Faustus, he tots up the booty of his will-to-power – retracing his steps as he studies a map – and puzzlement registers on his face, a pathetic lack of satiety. He craves further advances yet has forgotten his core motivation. Like its protagonist, Marlowe’s play came, saw, conquered and was itself supplanted. Within a generation the bombast of Marlowe’s lines was mocked – including even (in Henry IV part II) by Shakespeare himself. Tamburlaine became a footstool upon which a greater theatrical talent rested.
Until Dec 1. Tickets: 01789 403493; rsc.org.uk