One of the more familiar plaudits offered to A Song of Ice and Fire over its three-decade history has been "Shakespearian." Like the Bard, George R.R. Martin drew on Roman and medieval history to inspire his work, and perhaps Richard III and Julius Caesar as well as the more obvious Hamlet and MacBeth were at least rattling around somewhere in Martin's head when sketching his story of warring knights and scheming politicians. It's therefore appropriate that the long-awaited first stage play based on his Westerosi mythos is being staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Bard's own home town on Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Cynics may fear this is merely the latest in the lengthy franchising of the series whilst it remains incomplete, adding to the miniatures, wargames, cookbooks and mugs though, alas, Game of Thrones: The Flamethrower remains conspicuously absent. But whilst the author has battled the howling winter winds, he has grown adroit at finding collaborators and other ways of giving fans new information about the known world of Westeros and Essos. The World of Ice and Fire gave us much-requested information on the history of the world and its wide breadth, whilst Fire & Blood expanded mightily on the Targaryen reign, giving us striking vignettes and short narratives about the reign of the dragons. But nothing George or his collaborators have created previously are as iconic as this: the story of the great tourney at Harrenhal and the civil war it triggered, known (to the winners) as Robert's Rebellion.
This is the immediate inciting event of the history of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's arguably (and literally!) in the smouldering wreckage of this civil war that the story of Ned Stark, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen is born. Martin himself has been wary of portraying this story directly, feeling it takes away too much mystery from the series itself and also feeling that future revelations in the books would tell us all that we needed to know about these events. But script writer Duncan Macmillan disagreed, instead finding in these events a tragic-comic epic, worth retelling in its own right as well as the immediate prequel to the narrative of the books (and, of course, its TV adaptation, Game of Thrones).
The play is split into two distinct halves. The first is focused on the Great Tourney of Harrenhal in the Year of False Spring itself. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen has cunningly decided to use the tourney as cover to gauge the opinions of the great lords of Westeros on whether his father, the Mad King Aerys, should be removed from power. Unfortunately, most of the great lords have refused to come, instead sending their sons to try to win glory on the tourney field. Rhaegar's hopes are further dashed when the Mad King unexpectedly arrives to behold the tourney himself, his first time outside of the Red Keep, let alone King's Landing, for many a year. Rhaegar's political frustrations are undercut when he meets Lyanna Stark, daughter of Lord Rickard of Winterfell. Both have suffered strange visions and dreams since childhood, one of ice and one of fire. By combining the two, they realise they may hold the key to the future...if Rhaegar can convince himself his dreams are real and prophetic, not the prelude to the same madness that has consumed his father. Things are complicated by Lyanna's betrothal to Robert Baratheon, the only great lord who is present and whom Rhaegar seeks to make an ally, and the presence of Rhaegar's wife Elia Martell, who loves to dabble with politics.
The second, much more episodic, half is more familiar, telling of how the Mad King finally snaps the frail bonds of order in Westeros and triggers full-blown civil war, with half of the realm rising against him and too many of the other half decided to sit at home and see which way the wind blows.
As stage productions go, this can only be described as extremely impressive. The audience sits around a stage that cuts through the seating, meaning action can be happening in several places at the same time (though the audio cues and focus means you can't miss the main action). The stage has several immense props that form from underneath and overhead, such as a heart tree that assembles Volton-like whenever characters seek the wisdom of the old gods, whilst the Iron Throne elevates through the rear of the stage (vaguely like a launch sequence from Thunderbirds) whenever the action moves to the Red Keep. Horses are a mixture of human-powered puppets and props. The Mountain is only depicted by a massive suit of armour moved around by stagehands. During several key battles, literally larger-than-life armoured puppet versions of the characters do battle rather than the real actors. The musical accompaniment is excellent. This isn't a musical but there are several in-universe songs that are beautifully performed.
The acting is also almost uniformly excellent. Special props must go to Harmony Rose-Bremner whose Lyanna Stark carries much of the weight of the production (especially in the first half), whose performance is the right mix of funny, melancholic and romantic. Noah Ritter's Rhaegar is also excellent, but it's Callum Woodhouse as Robert Baratheon who maybe emerges as the most surprising performance, here playing Robert not as a fun-loving young buck but a man haunted by an unspeakable family tragedy who seeks oblivion from his feelings in drinking, and fixates on Lyanna as possibly his salvation from grief, going some way to explain his infatuation with her even decades later despite only a short acquaintance. Michael Shaeffer has the hardest task as the Mad King himself, imbuing Aerys with the charisma of the king he used to be but also the cruelty and dangerous whimsy of the tyrant he has become.
The performances and writing here also demonstrate interesting ideas, such as maybe Eddard Stark's (Michael Abubakar) regard for Robert being driven by his similarity to his brother Brandon (Luke Brady), explaining their closeness whilst also being very different. Elizabeth Ayodele is also intriguing as Elia Martell, here an active player in her husband's schemes but who also has a hard head for politics, whilst not perhaps being as skilled at the game as she thinks, especially when she matches wits against the redoubtable Varys (Hughie O'Donnell).
Sometimes the narrative creaks as the playwright struggles to keep all of Martin's numerous references to the tourney across five large novels and several supporting works straight (Tanisha Spring's fun Ashara Dayne being the object of veneration by half the male cast, it seems). The cast is enormous and couldn't get much bigger without becoming unwieldy, but fans may be surprised not to see Jon Connington, Hoster Tully or Jon Arryn at all, with characters like Catelyn, Tywin and Cersei reduced to not much more than cameos.
Fans may also wonder how canon all of this stuff is, and several clear breaks with the books and TV show may suggest that the answer is "eh, kind of." We know from the books that Daenerys and Jon Snow were born multiple months apart, which is not the case here, whilst the play keeps with the book timeline of having Jaehaerys II split the Unlikely King from the Mad King (the Unlikely goes resolutely unnamed here as well, possibly as a nod to spoilers for HBO watchers). Several scenes split by months or weeks in the text are also combined here for dramatic effect, and the timeline as a whole is left somewhat ambiguous, probably a good thing as there are multiple pregnancies to account for.
The play is almost four hours long, which is a formidable length, and it's impressive the cast and crew maintain their energy levels throughout the whole thing. But the splitting of the narrative in two, each with a different character focus, cleverly keeps up the pacing. There's also an air of slightly off-kilter surrealness to the proceedings, making it feel like we're watching a fever dream or maybe even an in-universe play based on garbled historical records many centuries in Westeros's future. If this is ever adapted for the screen, it feels like Denis Villeneuve and his slightly askew vibes would fit it well.
This is a hugely impressive production, engrossing and technically skilled but centered on the excellent performances playing haunted characters trying to do the right thing, but almost invariably making things worse.
Game of Thrones: The Mad King (**** for newcomers but ***** for hardened fans) is running at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the UK, until 5 September. There are apparently tentative plans for a West End run and possibly overseas, but no firm plans have yet been announced.
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