Review: GAME OF THRONES: THE MAD KING, Royal Shakespeare Theatre

With some reluctance, longtime fans of Game of Thrones have acknowledged that the novel series that inspired the era-defining HBO fantasy show – GEORGE RR MARTIN’s A Song of Ice and Fire – will likely never be finished, and the franchise will be chiefly remembered for its disappointing TV ending. The next best thing, then, is The Mad King, a play that attempts to resolve some of the series’ central mysteries, and put an end to many a heated Reddit debate.

We begin about 15 years before the start of the original series, when King Aerys Targaryen (Michael Shaeffer, in an expert display of medieval royal paranoia) is descending into mental illness, sowing the seeds of political chaos in Westeros. By the end of this near-four hour epic, Aerys’ throne has been usurped by Robert Baratheon (Callum Woodhouse), a man paralysed by grief over his deceased parents, who never asked to be king. Along the way, several of the main characters from the original series are born, in traumatic circumstances whose ripple effects will echo down the decades.

Before all that, though, we’re drawn into a tangle of conspiracies to depose Aerys, all against the backdrop of a jousting tournament. The Baratheon family have allied with the Starks against the Targaryen dynasty, while two of Aerys’ sworn knights wrestle with their complicity in tyranny in a way that not-so-subtly echoes Brutus and Cassius. Aerys’ son Rhaegar (Noah Ritter), meanwhile, is tortured by prophetic knowledge of Westeros’ apocalyptic destiny, but reluctant to put the nail in his father’s coffin.

The script – by Every Brilliant Thing writer Duncan MacMillan – has a lot of heavy lifting to do to explain all this to those who may be rusty on their Westerosi history, and occasionally slips into clunky exposition, with characters stating their names, hopes, dreams and painful backstories as though in an introductory therapy session. Still, these flaws are easy to miss thanks to Dominic Cooke’s carefully choreographed in-the-round direction, which evokes a sense of several earthshattering events all taking place at once.

Providing a reprieve from all the backroom politics is the doomed romance between Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark (Harmony Rose-Bremner), whom fans will remember as the parents of Jon Snow. Ritter imbues Rhaegar with an otherwordly magnetism, to which Rose-Bremner’s Lyanna, who balances tomboyish independence with the existential self-doubt of late adolescence, is irresistibly drawn, despite her previous betrothal to Robert. As their relationship pushes Westeros towards war, Lyanna ruminates Helen of Troy-style on her culpability, especially after members of her family die at the hands of Aerys.

Speaking of the Starks, arguably the emotional heart of this story is Ned Stark, Lyanna’s brother and Robert’s tragic second-in-command so memorably portrayed by Sean Bean on TV. Here, Michael Abubakar gives the youthful Ned a sense of potent political idealism, which provides an illuminating rejoinder to the TV character without resorting to mimicry. Rhaegar’s spurned wife Elia Martell (Elizabeth Ayodele) is another highlight; Macmillan avoids shunting the character into a ‘scorned woman’ role by giving her an astute political mind, a sense of solidarity with Rhaegar’s ambitions and a romantic relationship with one of her handmaidens.

The Mad King has been beset by production delays over the last couple of weeks, but the near-spiritual sight of a weirwood tree rising from the stage may have been worth the wait. This iteration of the franchise may lean more into Game of Thrones’ intricate realpolitik than it does its magical worldbuilding, but Lume’s steampunk-influenced puppetry pushes it gently towards ‘fantasy’ territory; the red-eyed dragons hallucinated by Rhaegar are genuinely ominous.

Georgia McGuinness’ costumes step away from the TV series’ austere visual language, and distinguish Westeros’ leading families with a bold variety of textures and colour palettes (the fur ensembles worn by the Starks feel almost Central Asian). Lighting and sound design by Jon Clark and Tom Gibbons help elevate the several lengthy combat scenes, but often feel overbearing, distracting from the narrative rather than enhancing it.

There is a lot to please fans here, with throwaway lines foreshadowing things to come, and lore tidbits designed for dissection on those aforementioned Reddit threads. But there’s also a more universally appealing tale under the surface, of how we choose between love and duty, how the personal bleeds into the political, and how we cope when life doesn’t turn out the way we planned. Sometimes The Mad King makes these points with all the subtlety of Robert’s warhammer, but it has the storytelling ambition to win over even the most diehard of dragon sceptics.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King plays at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until 8 September

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