Jade the blade set to tackle a feisty queen

JADE ANOUKA is ready for a bloody battle royal. The actress (right) will play the title role in Queen Margaret at the Royal Exchange in Manchester this autumn.

The formidable Margaret of Anjou married Henry VI, a king so weak she became the real power behind the throne.

‘She’s also a force in Shakespeare,’ Anouka told me. ‘She’s the only character to feature in four of Shakespeare’s plays,’ she added, explaining how Margaret figures prominently in all three parts of Henry VI and Richard III.

Jeanie O’Hare has used the Bard and other sources to weave together the play, which runs from September 14. ‘It’s a re-telling of the War of the Roses,’ Anouka said. ‘Margaret was in the thick of it. She kills Richard (later Richard III) of York’s dad, and he wants revenge. It’s a hefty story!’ She’s well prepared for a fight. Anouka studied at the Guildford School of Acting and was top at stage combat.

She learned how to box for Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy, set in a prison. And Jade plans to take extra sword-fighting classes in the summer to prepare for Margaret.

‘It’s good fun,’ she said from Hampstead Theatre, where she’s playing the title role in The Phlebotomist.

Anouka said she’s meeting Queen Margaret director Elizabeth Freestone next week to discuss it. ‘[Margaret] is 14 when we first meet her and she dies at 52, and I don’t yet know how we’re going to deal with her ageing.’