The major reason to see Alley Theater’s Born with Teeth is the dynamic acting of Matthew Amendt and Dylan Godwin. Director Rob Melrose has wisely kept them distinct both physically and attitudinally and, most praiseworthy, also vocally. They speak prose and poetry differently despite a sameness in author Liz Duffy Adams’s script that makes the drama basically a series of arguments.
The arguments in Born with Teeth use different sources, at times interrupted by personal animosities or opposite attractions. The play’s title is a phrase linked to beliefs that one so born must embrace one’s true identity, that one will communicate effectively, or that spiritually one will have a sense of purpose. In these regards, both Shakespeare and Marlowe have been so born. Both have acted accordingly and continue same as they work together on the “Henry Trilogy.”
There is no mystery about the collaboration of the two writers on the manuscript. Of the two, Shakespeare is the one who wrote with others not only at the beginning of his career but at the end and during his retirement. Marlowe not only was a sole author (although he also did use others as sources) but bold in writing about topics forbidden politically and socially in the times. Amendt’s Kit makes that very clear.
Shakespeare is presented as more opportunistic and even devious than as reputed. Still, the historical context absolves him of advanced guilty motives. He’s shown as reacting naturally to his lesser fame as a writer than as a medium quality actor. (One wishes his position as an actor-manager, that is—administrator had been mentioned.)
The two different personalities are handled well. Marlowe is definitely the more educated, meaner one and quite gay and anti-religious. Shakespeare is not ill-schooled but mostly curious, able to absorb knowledge quickly. His actions are more cautious than Marlowe’s. His family has been said to retain forbidden Catholicism.
It is a pity there is not more of the two writers’ poetry presented. Anyone who would confuse the fully poetic Marlowe “of the mighty line” with the variety of cadences and image clusters, etc., in Shakespeare’s typical poetry has got to be tone deaf. Little is made also of the difference between Marlowe’s Herculean heroes (especially Tamburlaine) and any of Shakespeare’s. Born with Teeth is a quite limited view of Marlowe and Shakespeare as playwrights. Its strength is what comes through as political, social, and religious background at their time of collaboration. I wish there had been more lines from the two men’s plays to represent their works’ strengths. An admission: Having read, seen, and taught all of their plays and poems and many scholars’ comments on them, I probably expected too much of Born with Teeth.
As for the technical set-up at Asolo Rep, I found the set quite ordinary but with a curious big black form between an interior room where the men worked and a street scene of buildings outside. I do not understand why, finally, big lights come over a downstage big table and many chairs in the room, while smoke and something other substance that looks like liquid appear across the stage above what might once have been the footlights.
