“If Christopher Marlowe were alive today, he would’ve painted the town red. What a bad bitch!” howls Ncuti Gatwa.

He’s speaking via phone from London, describing the Elizabethan playwright and scoundrel, known as much for plays like Doctor Faustus as for his libertine exploits. (He is believed to have been stabbed to death in a bar fight at just 29 years old while facing charges of “heresy.”)

Gatwa, the 32-year-old Rwandan-Scottish actor of Sex Education and Dr. Who fame, is currently donning Marlowe’s rakish leather doublet and cunning grin in the fiery West End two-hander Born With Teeth , opposite Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare, Marlowe’s imagined rival, collaborator, and—in the very hypothetical world of the play—lusty sparring partner.

“The rivalry they feel toward

See Full Page