Game of Thrones: The Mad King review – an action-packed saga of dry ice and fire
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
This prequel to the TV series has one joust after another, spectacular stagecraft and plenty of modern resonance
During the RSC’s 65 years, numerous Lears have lost their minds and frequent Caesars been slaughtered by their courts. Now, though, a tyrant new to its stages faces both fates. He is King Aerys II Targaryen, ancestor of one warring bloodline in Game of Thrones, the dramatisation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels that helped TV streamers’ rise to global domination during eight HBO seasons from 2011 to 2019.
Some may balk at an institution named for England’s greatest dramatist staging an American drama franchise. There is, though, a compelling economic imperative: rising costs due to current wars (a frequent problem for Martin’s ancient oligarchs too) and Covid-era debts now exacerbated by paying back government loans means that the RSC could use another big commercial transfer – as its musical Matilda may not be immortal.
There is also an artistic rationale. Martin has always credited Shakespeare’s English history plays as a model. Dramatist Duncan Macmillan – starting from an unexplored reference in the books to a consequential tournament in this universe in 281AC (after conquest) – and director Dominic Cooke bow even deeper to the presiding genius: Michael Shaeffer’s King Aerys, with long white beard and flower-braided hair, strongly resembles Laurence Olivier’s television Lear.
You don’t need to read the entrails of a raven to guess the target of the title 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.
There are already two HBO prequels – House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – but while those are set up to 200 years before the TV series, Macmillan’s is a much closer prologue. That is a harder task, as he must match up with the season one box set. Fans will be attracted by back stories of telly-legendary characters: one young man is addressed as Eddard Stark, but pleads to be known as Ned. Two leads in the main TV show are babies at the end of the RSC’s three hours and 45 minutes.
Macmillan’s dialogue is quasi-Shakespearean with a rough iambic beat. A heavily pregnant princess is “overloaded with the hopes of the realm”. One of many violently bereaved characters tells another: “If a beloved has been wrenched from you, then we are fellow countrymen.” The problem comes when this plausible pastiche of Elizabethan politicking collides with Martin’s supernaturalism.
The steeds of puppetry and movement directors Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell – vast skeletal frames manipulated by squads of actors – carry characters in rather too many jousts and battles. Dogs and dragons are similarly simulated. But whatever the efforts and budgets expended, theatre can’t match the stunning dollars-to-burn televisual atmospherics. Chloe Lamford’s set, though, includes a striking sacred tree, intermittently formed by a huge trunk rising to dock with flowered foliage descending. Real flames and mock fog frequently swirl on a cruciform walkway that quarters the stalls of the Royal Shakespeare theatre: a scene of dry ice and fire.
Actors in adaptations of screen material – such as the current The Silence of the Lambs – can choose whether to be avatars of the TV or film stars. Here, the performers must be plausible previews of their future television inheritors. Maxim Ays as Jaime Lannister, Michael Abubakar’s Ned Stark, the Cersei Lannister of Daisy Franks and Hughie O’Donnell’s Lord Varys might all be earlier portraits of the famous, but youth and new lines leave leeway for their own intonations. Even so, the greatest impact is made by characters featured in the main TV show only in dialogue or flashback: Princess Elia Martell and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, viscerally played by Elizabeth Ayodele and Noah Ritter.
The play’s end intriguingly leaves a 14-year gap until the TV series, perhaps allowing for more instalments. Purists will object that, rather than staging Shakespeare-adjacent populist spin-offs, the RSC should be offering its house dramatist’s royal dramas plain. The counter argument is that hitching on to a cultural juggernaut may bring in new sources of income and audiences.
The review star system can struggle with shows that some might sell their house to see but others would be reluctant to leave home for. This feels like a five-star production for most devoted throners but a three-star for those who haven’t seen the TV series. Thereby, to channel this show’s infectious tones, the Judging One has trod a path between those stellar prophecies.
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