Tamburlaine (Bristol & London)

Three years ago, director David Farr and actor Greg Hicks won rave reviews and loud applause for their RSC revival of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

Now they’re back – with a staging of Christopher Marlowe’s two-part historical epic, Tamburlaine the Great – part of the Barbican’s ongoing Young Genius season. Hopes are high then for this production living up to its illustrious title.

Tamburlaine is the Terminator of the Ancient World, a Scythian shepherd turned warlord, bent on world conquest. This killing machine simply won’t stop and woe betide anyone who gets in his way. Virgins are put to the sword; cities to the torch.

It sounds exciting, and so it certainly proved 12 years ago in an RSC production directed by Terry Hands. Sadly, however, this production is woefully short on thrills and spills and rarely achieves lift-off in the course of what felt like a punishingly long three hours.

Part of the reason for this must be laid at the door of Farr who directed an even drearier production of Julius Caesar for the RSC last year. Certainly there are theatrical flourishes and some colour – banners of orange silk unfold to the ground – but it is a far cry from Hands’ bravura staging.

And Hicks, excellent in Coriolanus, is ill-served by this play and this production. Where Sher was a ball of unquenchable energy, drunk on power and his own martial prowess, Hicks exudes low-voltage sourness with little sense of his character’s interior life. He delivers Tamburlaine’s words with the utmost clarity and sense, but the ‘mighty line’ which was admired by Marlowe’s contemporaries and which animates his plays, seems largely lost.

It is left to Jeffery Kissoon, as the humbled emperor Bazajeth, to bring this production to wonderful life – never more so than in the scene with his wife, played by Ann Ogbomo, prior to his death, which he achieves by dashing out his brains against the bars of his cage. Kissoon, thrilling in the recent NT revival of Henry IV Parts I and II, is simply magnificent and lights up the stage.

– Pete Wood