THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT
Gielgud Theatre until January 23. Tickets: 0844 482 5151
Having been thoroughly engrossed in the stage versions of Hilary Mantel’s first two novels about Thomas Cromwell – Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies – I was looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy.
Ben Miles has grown in stature in the lead role, as Cromwell himself grew from a Putney blacksmith’s son to become Henry VIII’s most trusted fixer.
But, following the departure of Mike Poulton, the playwright who did such a good job on the first two, Mantel and Miles have written the third play themselves.
Big mistake. Fine novelist though she is, Mantel is no playwright, and neither is Miles, fine actor though he is.
Doubts set in early when a series of several short scenes trip over each other in a rush to tell an admittedly long and complex story.
The play opens with Cromwell imprisoned in the Tower then flashbacks tell how he fell from the King’s favour. Jeremy Herrin’s direction doesn’t help at all. Characters declaim to the audience in barnstorming style rather than addressing each other. There is little sense of intimacy or closeted peril. Miles and Nathaniel Parker as Henry VIII show their characters’ age with the usual tropes – a limp for Henry, a headful of grey hair for Cromwell – but they are superficial.
Nicholas Woodeson plays the Duke of Norfolk as a dangerous, ageing imp and Leo Wan is suitably reptilian as Richard Riche. But comic double takes and cartoonish reactions elsewhere are wholly inappropriate and there are some lamentably uncontrolled performances.
And to have the ghost of Cardinal Wolsey (Tony Turner) prancing across the stage as if he’s in some Afterlife discotheque is just plain silly. Someone’s been watching too much Blackadder.