Born With Teeth
Closing: November 01, 2025Born With Teeth - 2025 West End History , Info & More
Wyndham's Theatre
(Leicester Square) Charing Cross Road London
In these dangerous times, who will burn brightest — and who will burn out?
Winter 1591.
It is a dangerous time for artists: the country is full of conspiracy and paranoia.
In the backroom of a pub, writing sensations Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare are forced together in a creative union. Alone, with the table as their stage and battlefield, they sharpen their pens – and let their genius fly.
Across three secret meetings, the rivals duel and flirt like their lives depend on it – and with spies everywhere, betrayal is so tempting.
Born With Teeth - 2025 - West End Cast
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR Born With Teeth
Will Marlowe and Shakespeare snog or not? That is the question.
8 / 10
Innuendos and double-entendres immediately settle in as a second language while they start to excavate the nature of poetry and espionage. They orbit each other with crackling charisma in an ambiguous limbo designed by Joanna Scotcher. Three walls of barn-door lights (Neil Austin) suspend the performance. Brief projection work tells us it’s 1591: Marlowe and Shakespeare, therefore, find themselves collaborating on the three parts of Henry VI between the threats posed by religious imbalance and the secret services. The social unrest of late-Tudor England is the foundation of the story.
Fun but trashy two-hander in which William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe have a sexy time
6 / 10
Ultimately what Born with Teeth suffers from the most is asking us to imagine a sex and paranoia crazed Elizabethan society while not actually showing it to us. At one point Marlowe is literally lecturing Shakespeare with a diagram about how patronage works, but it might have been easier to picture if we ever saw the outside world. Fair enough, that’s not the play Duffy wrote. But I can’t help but feel she probably had a more expansive vision that she squashed down for the sake of crafting a cost effective celebrity vehicle. The final act tries to pivot to tragedy, but it’s all based on off stage politicking that it’s hard to invest in.
by Aliya Al-Hassan - September 3, 2025
Winter 1591. It is a dangerous time for artists: the country is full of conspiracy and paranoia. In the backroom of a pub, writing sensations Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare are forced together in a creative union. Alone, with the table as their stage and battlefield, they sharpen their pens – and let their genius fly. Across three secret meetings, the rivals duel and flirt like their lives depend on it – and with spies everywhere, betrayal is so tempting.
by Cindy Marcolina - September 2, 2025
“Does my flesh dazzle you?” a lascivious Christopher Marlowe asks a flustered William Shakespeare in what we can only describe as an exceptional example of theatrical slash fiction. For the uninitiated, “slash fiction” is a genre of fanfiction that focuses on the romantic relation between preexisting fictional characters of the same sex. Liz Duffy Adams’s Born With Teeth brings the female gaze to the West End. Directed by Daniel Evans and starring Ncuti Gatwa alongside Edward Bluemel, 90 steamy minutes of action puts two most venerated playwrights in England together like we’ve only ever found on websites like AO3 (Archive Of Our Own, the biggest fan-run fanfiction platform) and Tumblr.
by Chloe Rabinowitz - August 15, 2025
You can now get a first look at Ncuti Gatwa as Kit Marlowe and Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare in Born With Teeth, which marks its West End premiere presented by Playful Productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Elizabeth Williams.
by Stephi Wild - April 16, 2025
Tickets are now on general sale for the West End premiere of Born With Teeth, featuring Ncuti Gatwa as Christopher Marlowe and Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare.
Born With Teeth History
Other Productions of Born With Teeth
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
Videos