You don’t need to read the entrails of a raven to guess the target of the subtitle The Mad King: the various Brutuses plotting his fall conclude that the “paranoid and delusional” monarch will destroy their civilisation. The focus, though, is not just Trumpian. Macmillan references two wider international crises – the instability of heads of state and the weather – and a UK national concern: the endurance of a royal bloodline. The RSC’s patron, King Charles III, might skip this one.
The main auditorium has been reconfigured so that the audience presses in on all sides with the action predominantly confined to a cruciform stage with mighty gates at the far end and a coronet-style arch at its centre. The opening wordless sequence, featuring an inordinate procession of arrivals (there’s a cast of 36), conjures a due aura of wonder and clanging foreboding. Most strikingly, a number of characters enter on horseback; these magnificent metallic steeds are operated, as in War Horse, by an obliging trio of handlers.
Dominic Cavendish, the Telegraph
The great achievement of this reimagining of George RR Martin’s universe by writer Duncan Macmillan and director Dominic Cooke is that it ties up plot points from the Song of Ice and Fire franchise in ways likely to satisfy avid fans of the novels and the subsequent TV series but simultaneously creates a narrative clear and engaging enough to entrance the only partially affiliated or the complete newbie.
Designer Chloe Lamford creates a visionary space, where dragon puppets and vast stomping horses stalk in shadowy slo mo like they’re embedded deep in this world’s collective memory. Silk-skirted courtly dances and unwieldy but spectacular joust scenes show how these dynasties enjoy themselves, before the noble blood starts to fall.
Alice Saville, the Independent
This prequel to a blood-soaked dynastic saga wanders on for so long that it makes Christopher Nolan’s journey into Greek mythology seem a model of understatement. There’s no reason why the RSC shouldn’t bring Martin’s epic books to the stage in Game of Thrones: The Mad King, but if this stolid production gives hardcore GoT fans a chance to hunt for “Easter eggs”, it seldom comes close to matching the grim aura of the TV series.
The first half of Cooke’s superbly staged, spectacular production has the feel of a dynamic Bayeux Tapestry: a stunning pageant of medieval stop-motion animation. But after the interval, the plot takes off. Sparks fly romantically and dramatically, which is just as well because, at three hours 45 minutes, it’s almost as long as Hamlet.
Macmillan’s adaptation takes pains to explain. Some of the exposition clanks, but I understand the necessity. More problematic is too many actors portentously declaiming everything with Shakespearean affectation, not helped by the jarring excess of ofts, betwixts and mayhapses, when Martin’s success lies in making (fictional) history feel viscerally immediate. In that, all the actresses dazzle, notably Elizabeth Ayodele’s vivid Princess Elia and Mariah Gale’s monstrous yet magnificent Queen Rhaella.
