A new prequel to George RR Martin’s blockbuster fantasy saga Game of Thrones will be staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon this summer.
The best-selling author, whose novels have been turned into a juggernaut TV franchise, said the RSC was the “obvious choice” to stage the play, Game of Thrones: The Mad King, because Shakespeare was a constant source of inspiration for him. “Not only that, but he faced similar challenges of how to put the war on stage,” Martin added. “So we’re in good company.”
The play is a long time coming: its adapter Duncan Macmillan and director Dominic Cooke have announced that they have collaborated on a Game of Thrones project for an unspecified venue in 2021. In a statement today, the couple said: “George’s storyline is Shakespearean in its scale and its themes: dynastic struggle, ambition, rebellion, madness, prophecy, ill-fated love. From the beginning, Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies have been our instincts.
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, the RSC’s co-artistic directors from 2023, said the new play’s “legendary cycle of warring families is continuous with the cycles of Shakespeare’s history”. They added that the play explores “the true nature of power through the lens of young people struggling with inherited identities”.
Martin, who will serve as executive producer, has already visited the company’s headquarters in Stratford and is said to have thoroughly enjoyed his tour of the weapons department. “I never imagined it would be anything other than a book,” he says of the novel A Game of Thrones, published in 1996 and beginning the series under the collective title A Song of Ice and Fire. “It’s a place for my imagination to be unfettered,” he continued. “To my great surprise, it was received for one [TV] series, and viewers were able to enter the world of my imagination through the medium of television. That my work will now be transferred to the stage was something I did not expect, but welcomed with great excitement and enthusiasm.
Produced by HBO, Game of Thrones ran for eight seasons from 2011-19 and has already inspired major prequels for television: House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The play takes place a decade before the events of Game of Thrones and features familiar characters from houses Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Martell. A campaign synopsis reads: “A long winter thaws in Harrenhal and spring is promised. At a sumptuous feast on the eve of a jousting tournament, lovers meet and revelers speculate about who will compete. But in the shadows, amid growing impatience over his kingdom’s bloodthirsty occupations, a treasonous plot within the kingdom of the Maddius Kings is far away, the bells of war sounding.
Many of the actors who appeared in the TV series appeared with the RSC earlier in their careers, including Julian Glover, Diana Rigg, Sean Bean, Charles Dance and Ian Glen. Cast and dates for the new drama have yet to be announced; Tickets will be available from April. It is being performed in the RSC’s main auditorium, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which has a theater capacity of just over 1,000 people.
Some say theaters are showing too many adaptations of hit novels and TV series, but the RSC hopes to attract new audiences with such a franchise, alongside its successful version of Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro, which opens at the Barbican in 2022 and runs for a year in the West End. The company has recently sought to reduce its workforce and is considering other savings to address the financial shortfall.
Macmillan, whose plays include the Lungs and Cook, who will take over as the new artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, said: “It will be thrilling for us to share this new play with audiences who know and love George’s books and HBO’s series.
