Arden of Faversham, Rose Theatre, Thursday 1st July

Tucked away behind the great Globe, down a gloomy street, past the deliciously titled Bear Gardens, under a shiny blue plaque, is the Rose Theatre. It is a profoundly depressing sight. The paint is peeling, the box office is a shack, and the lady selling coffee from behind a wonky trestle table looks kind of grumpy. It is, as the nice young man kindly explains before we're allowed to take our seats, an archaeological site, although at the moment further excavation looks hugely unlikely. We get a quick explanation of the (only partially successful) campaign in 1989 to save the site, and are ushered in. Rope lights show the outer and inner walls of the original building, and the placement of the stage, all under a protective layer of sand, concrete and water, and it's a little bit magical to watch your reflection washing over the floor of the theatre.
The Rose has a reputation for putting on plays that are not performed often - staples of the Bankside theatre that might have packed them in in 1589, but just aren't doing it any more. In the past, I've missed Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday and Kyd's Soliman and Perseda here, so I was glad to make it to Arden of Faversham, as it's unlikely I'll see another performance for years, if at all. It's an anonymous play, but suggestions for authorship have been made in favour of Marlowe (there's the geography), Shakespeare (there's the Arden connection) and Kyd (there's a bloody massacre in it). I'm not really swayed by any of the arguments, but I don't think it matters, because as it turns out, it's a bloody good play.
The tiny stage, in the gallery overlooking the excavations, with a full house of cramped audience huddled around it, does not seem immediately promising. However, Peter Darney, directing, has not for one moment allowed his actors to be limited by the space. There are punch-ups, sword fights and a goodly amount of (graphically) physical comedy. Rachel Dale, as the conniving wife of the unfortunate Mr Arden of Faversham, 'ungentle Alice', is marvellous - seductive, cunning and charming by turns, as untrusting as she is untrustworthy, a good match for Jonathan Woolf's edgy Mosby, clearly out for anything and everything he can get. Mark Carlisle is a very sympathetic Arden, and Francis Adams does solid work as his rather less credulous friend. The cast as a whole do a good job of evoking the freedom of the city as compared to the closeness of the country (and its gossiping), and the London we see briefly is one where everyone is anonymous and the usual rules do not apply - a ruffian can have his head broken by a woman without retribution. The play, for all its tragedy, has a thread of rollicking comedy, and it's the dirty jokes that get the biggest laughs. The two star turns, who earn most applause are Kent ruffians Black Will and Shakebag, a marvellous punk pair, who here swagger around, insulting the audience, pilfering from them, hiding amongst them, starting fights, cracking dirty jokes and generally being revolting.
The script has been trimmed lightly, but nothing is wanting, and at an hour and fifty minutes, no interval, it's a neat little piece, quite fast paced and (thanks largely to Will and Shakebag) marvellous good fun. There is a slight problem in that doubling of parts has given rise to an extraordinary number of regional accents - it's not necessary to define characters thus, and left me with the impression that Early Modern Kent was a remarkably cosmopolitan place. But overall, a very fair showing, and a nice little domestic tragedy. Now go and write the Rose a cheque, eh?