EDWARD II

MUSIC John McCabe
SETS Peter J. Davidson
COSTUMES Jasper Conran
LIGHTING Peter Mumford

A ballet obliquely informed by the Aids crisis, I was astounded by my first encounter with Christopher Marlowe’s play about England’s ‘gay’ king, Edward II. The play charts the fall of Edward and his favourite, Gaveston, and the parallel rise of his queen, Isabella, under the corrupting influence of the Marcher Lord, Roger Mortimer. Marlowe brilliantly confounds prevailing prejudice and makes it clear that sexual orientation is not the dominating factor in determining human good or evil, nor the ability to rule wisely.

Edward’s earlier dissipation, and Isabella’s loneliness and vulnerability invoke distaste for the former and compassion for the child queen, but these emotions are reversed when Edward falls from power and loses his lover whilst Isabella declares war on her husband and threatens to kill their own son in order to seize the throne.

It had long been a dream of mine to work with John Cranko’s Stuttgart Ballet and the commission from Marcia Haydée to create Edward II there was one of the most exhausting but exciting periods of my life.