Adapting Tudor epic for the Chichester stage

Mike’s stage version is the opening play in the Chichester Festival Theatre summer season, running from Friday, April 19-Saturday, May 11. The piece offers Henry VIII’s court as a stage for love and treachery, where the weapons of choice are sex, marriage and the executioner’s axe. As Henry’s mistress, Mary Boleyn is a pawn in her family’s lust for power. But as Mike says, she’s a character who decides that enough is enough.

“You have got to find that through-line and the through-line has to be intensely dramatic which means that a large proportion of the novel has to be set aside. It's got nothing to do with the length. It's all to do with the intensity and some novels just don't lend themselves to the stage. I can think of a couple that have been pretty much failures because there just isn't any dramatic line through them but in this one the plot is extremely strong. When I was asked to adapt the novel a long time ago – this process has taken years – I was still heavily into the Tudor court with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (RSC, West End and Broadway). Those two plays were acted on a large stage setting of Henry’s Tudor court but what really attracted me about Philippa’s book is that I could concentrate on the Boleyn family, specifically the three Boleyn children and the love affairs of Mary, Ann and George. The three Boleyn children are the driving force of my play. The stage upon which they act is still the Tudor court but what excites me is the intense plotting, the need for power driven by Lady Elizabeth Boleyn and the Duke of Norfolk. The play is really a behind-the-scenes view of what is happening with the Boleyn family. The way we're staging it, I hope, is the actual court but we've got a view of that court from within the confines of the Boleyn family. You see their conspiracy. You see their plotting; you see their plots being thwarted; and you see them having to invent new plots.

“But the really interesting character for me was Mary Boleyn who is not interested in the court. She just does what she is told and we get this double perspective, Mary’s view of the Boleyn family and the Bolyen’s family’s view of the court. I love conspiracy theories and it's a really intense and frightening plot. I wanted to make sure audiences were on the edge of their seats. I wanted it to be a thriller. I wanted you to think that you knew where it was going but then to change horses midstream.

“Mary is a neglected character. They knew that Mary was the king's mistress before Ann but until Philippa there was no attention on her at all and that's what interested me. Everybody else is trying desperately to get close to Henry and to power but she just wants to be her own woman. She's obedient. She does what she is told in her life. But what interests me is the way that she revolts. Eventually she says enough is enough and she wants to leave the lust for power behind. She is the wisest member the family.

"She can see what is going to happen but nobody listens to her warnings.”