A cruel king, a psychotic court and slimy aides – yes, it’s the terrible Tudors
The Other Boleyn Girl Chichester Festival Theatre Until Saturday, 2hrs 55mins ★★★★☆
Minority Report Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London Until May 18, 1hr 30mins ★★★☆☆
You may feel Tudor-ed out after Wolf Hall, but this adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s hit novel The Other Boleyn Girl is refreshingly classy. The three Boleyn siblings are George, Mary and Anne. Mary, married to a drip, has become the King’s mistress. (Henry VIII – in his pre-fatso days – has only a minor part.) She will in time be replaced by her sister, prompting Mary’s wonderful outburst: ‘My sister is an adulteress, a whore, a bigamist and Queen of England!’
It’s a stately yet intimate evening. The hell of being a woman in a psychotic Tudor court is glaringly exposed. Talk about the terrible Tudors. The sisters are ruled by their mother – Alex Kingston is the cruelly ambitious Lady Elizabeth – with Andrew Woodall as the shouty, brutish ‘Uncle Norfolk’. A fruity Roger Ringrose doubles up as the two slimers Wolsey and Cromwell.
The events are distilled by Mike Poulton, who did the Wolf Hall stage version for the RSC. Expect ferocious rows, pregnancies, disappointing girl babies and fear. Lots of fear. When Anne has a malformed foetus, even witchcraft is suspected. Freya Mavor bravely makes Anne brittle, fierce and unlikeable. Lucy Phelps is heartbreaking as Mary – happiest on a farm, frantic not to be separated from her son, despising the court. Kemi-Bo Jacobs is memorable as a kind Queen Catherine of Aragon, doubling as a haggish midwife.
The king (James Atherton) treats his wives like breeding sows. Babies are his business.
Director Lucy Bailey brings out the emotional detail in the family drama, and the rich music by Orlando Gough is a joy.
It’s not every day you see a Tom Cruise film on stage. Minority Report (based on a sci-fi story by Philip K. Dick) is rewritten here by David Haig. It’s set in a future where a ‘pre-crime’ police department arrests murderers before they kill. Jodie McNee plays the founder of this unit, but then she goes rogue. She’s great, waving a gun about and talking to a sulky hologram robot (Tanvi Virmani) who’s on her side.
I sat through it idly thinking that if slowly throttling, say, senior Post Office executives was illegal, we’d all be locked up. Alas, we see little of the ‘precogs’ who intuit crime – a memorable cornerstone of the movie. This lively, short show basically feels undeveloped. It looks great, it’s gratifyingly techie, but it needs work.