Daily Express
March 16, 2001
By Robert Gore-Langton

A few tender years ago, Joseph Fiennes was overshadowed by his older brother, Ralph. Now Ralph is already a has-been and Joe is the mega film star.

Given the high defection rate of seriously talented stage actors to the cinema (Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Tim Roth all got out of the theatre as quickly as they could), the present crop of youngsters are admirably diligent about coming back to the stage where they learnt what they know.

Joe Fiennes is a true Elizabethan. He made his name as the young Bard in Shakespeare in Love and as Dudley in the film Elizabeth. Now he's turned to Christopher Marlowe's tragedy Edward II, in the first major regional revival since Eddie Izzard played the role in Leicester (what a weird night that was).

This is the play in which Edward dies with a red-hot poker up his bottom, the nastiest stage death in the anals of history. The thing about this play (Edward falls hopelessly for the jumped-up Piers Gaveston who the English barons detest) is that the homosexuality isn't the issue. It's not a gay play. It's a universal love story - a study in utter, total complete obsession with another person.

Fiennes is brilliantly smitten in this snogfest which comes across as a startlingly modern love affair. Edward must have his adored Gaveston and the barons can stuff it. Staged in minimalist chic in black gear, the spiral of events is as horrible as the passion is real. Once Gaveston is killed, the sorry cycle repeats itself - to less effect - with Edward transferring affections to another pretty boy, Spencer (a very blonde Ben Porter).

When it comes to it, Edward's final degradation in a cesspit at Berkeley Castle is almost unwatchable. The assassin Lightborne (Jamie Sives, deliciously sick) is the true voice of the twisted, saturnine playwright whose own career ended at the point of a dagger in a pub brawl.

As a production it is not unflawed. Director Michael Grandage allows too much baronial shouting and leather trousered mincing from the camp crowd, and Christopher Oram's dark designs are too hands-off. But it's great to see work of this quality out of London and a real star bringing life to a play that usually lies rotting on the far side of the school syllabus.