Royal tale of Cromwell proves a hit in London
LONDON — Five centuries after he ruled the roost in Tudor England, Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, is playing to packed houses in London in two plays based on the bestselling novels of Hilary Mantel.
It is further evidence of how Mantel’s prizewinning books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies — which have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide — resonate for modern audiences with their mix of political and sexual intrigue.
The story of the matching and dispatching of the king’s wives — and the resulting political earthquake as Henry breaks with Rome to create a new Church of England — speaks across the ages, according to Mantel.
“This is our national soap opera,” she said in an interview.
The combined sixhour drama has just moved to London’s West End after a sell-out run in Stratford-upon-Avon.
A BBC TV version of the books is in the works, to be broadcast next year, with Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Homeland star Damian Lewis as Henry VIII.
The Royal Shakespeare Company production is played out on a stark set dominated by a giant cross that underscores the religious backdrop of the plotting and love matches going on the foreground.
The freshness of Mantel’s approach comes from telling the well-worn tale of Henry VIII through the lens of Cromwell, a brilliant and multilingual politician, lawyer, businessman and one-time mercenary.
He is played by Ben Miles, who makes him at once charming and frightening — a truly morally ambiguous character in the murky world of the Tudor court.
Miles describes him as “the original workingclass hero.” But he is also “a man on the make,” according to Mantel, who said she had gained a deeper understanding of Cromwell from talking to Miles as he got inside the character’s head.