“It’s theatre, not a history lesson,” says Will Shakespeare early on in Liz Duffy Adams’s “firecracker” of a new play. This line, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times , serves as a warning to the audience that they should “take everything” here “with a pinch of salt”.

Steamy, “mischievously provocative”, and “peppered with literary gags”, “Born With Teeth” imagines the relationship between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe as they collaborate on the “Henry VI” plays. It’s highly entertaining, and sensationally acted: Edward Bluemel makes a convincingly gauche but steely Will, the young man from the sticks, while Ncuti Gatwa (“Doctor Who”) is superb as Kit – a “hypnotic presence twirling a ridiculously camp quill”. But what holds the play back is its failure “to dive deeper into t

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