Wordplay and foreplay fill an immaculately acted battle of wills between William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe.

Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Blumethal put in a sweaty shift as they play two warring playwrights collaborating on a new play, each with different ideas of how to get ahead in an Elizabethan London riddled with intrigue and betrayal. The magnetic Gatwa's Marlowe is a spy for Robert Cecil, his side hustle giving up Catholics with no conscience. His writing career is important, but it's not like the lifeblood that flows through Blumenthal's endearing young Shakespeare, an anxious romantic that wants to live on through his work and keep his head down in an age of paranoia where even having a Catholic pamphlet could get your head a pike on London Bridge.

It's a fun conceit from writer Liz Duffy Adams, an entertaining reimagining of the Bard's early life and motivations that makes a great shot at giving the short-lived Marlowe his due. He's bombastic and funny, filthy and athletic as he plays antagonist to the studious Shakespeare. It's a lot of fun to watch as Gatwa and Blumthental bicker and flirt, their chemistry electric, with the sexual tension rising and falling, culminating in some impressive stage leaping and steamy make-out sessions. Then all at once we snap back to the argument, the crux of which is where the story fell a little short for me; Marlowe, the swaggering spy,  wants Shakespeare to join his perilous extracurricular activity. Whereas nerdy Shakespeare is content to write his poetry and not rock the boat, even if his family is Catholic on the sly. It doesn't really feel a necessity for our Will. The stakes couldn't be higher for Marlowe, but it's mostly through his own indiscretion. But there needs to be a reason for them to come together, and fall passionately in love, and more importantly, a reason they can't ride off into the sunset. It does ring a bit fan fiction at times, but what matter how thin the plot is, when the true draw is in these two fantastic performances, and based on those alone, the play's the thing.