The Marlowe Theatre is Canterbury's main venue for drama, dance and touring productions, a sleek modern building sitting in deliberate contrast to the medieval city around it.

Its name honours Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright who grew up here, attended the King's School, and went on to write Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine before meeting one of history's more theatrical ends: stabbed in the eye in a London brawl. Whether it was a drunken argument or a state-sanctioned assassination remains, four centuries on, an open question.

Outside the theatre's entrance, a bronze statue of local comedian Dave Lee occupies a bench. He was a Canterbury pantomime institution, whose annual Christmas performances culminated in the entire audience singing the Ghostbusters theme. Gloriously English.

VoiceMap's Canterbury tours use the Marlowe Theatre as a waypoint for exploring the city's unlikely knack for producing dangerous geniuses, tracing Marlowe's story from his Canterbury birthplace to the spy networks and religious controversies that may have got him killed.