[title]
Way back in 2014, long before the Mark Rylance TV versions, director Jeremy Herrin, actor Ben Miles and the RSC smashed it with two terrific, sprawling adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s historical fiction masterpieces ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘Bring Up the Bodies’. More focussed on the smaller characters than the Beeb version, and yet with a titanic turn from Miles as an inscrutable Cromwell, chief fixer to Nathaniel Parker’s Henry VIII, they were sensational works of adaptation from playwright Mike Poulton.
Could we hope for him to have a stage version in the bag scarcely a year after the long-awaited publication of ‘The Mirror and the Light’, the long-awaited denouement to the trilogy? Well apparently not: this new stage version is by Mantel herself, in a co-write with Miles, and presumably it’s been underway since before the book’s publication.
In most other respects it brings the old gang back together: Miles and Parker will star as Cromwell and the king, directed by Jeremy Herrin, in an RSC/Playful co-production, with design from Christopher Oram and music by Stephen Warbeck.
‘The Mirror and the Light’ runs at the Gielgud Theatre, Sep 23-Nov 28.
Tickets go on sale May 27.
Sign up for priority booking from May 24 at themirrorandthelight.co.uk.