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Wife Quantity 2 to serial husband, King Henry VIII, first to be beheaded and a marital set off for the Reformation, Anne Boleyn is no doubt a star of the Tudor age, her life and loss of life finely documented.
What’s lesser identified is the place of her sister, Mary – the opposite Boleyn of the title – in Henry’s court docket, and his coronary heart. She was the king’s mistress earlier than Anne turned his spouse. Plucked from the footnotes of historical past by novelist Philippa Gregory, on whose e-book this adaptation by Mike Poulton relies, this fictionalised story has twice been made into a movie, with Peter Morgan’s star-studded model providing a soft-focus portrait of the sisters.
How does this staging add to Mary’s legacy? It’s laborious to say. She stays a secondary pressure to the fierce, bold, extra sharply drawn Anne for a bit of too lengthy. Actually, the main target is much less on the emotional dynamic between sisters for probably the most half, extra on the bold strategising of the conniving Boleyn household who use Anne (Freya Mavor) and Mary (Lucy Phelps) as sexual pawns of their excessive stakes courtly manoeuvring.
Directed by Lucy Bailey, it’s all feverish plot, motion and exposition over character improvement and human drama within the first half.
The connection between the Boleyn siblings, together with brother George (James Corrigan), is flippantly sketched and never at all times probing sufficient. The trio seem on stage in a cub-like heap firstly however we don’t significantly really feel the tenderness between them. “I’m not as meek as you,” Anne says to Mary, however the edges between them aren’t sharp sufficient till the ultimate few scenes. Mary appears vague, athough she does finally reveal her quietly radical energy and company.
Prices of incest between Anne and George, which partly ship her to the block, are hinted at with a kiss however nothing of extra substance follows. What’s acutely proven, although, is how the sisters refuse to be passive victims, typically colluding with the household’s plans, at different occasions making an attempt to say their very own will. George is as trapped as his sisters, compelled right into a strategic marriage.
Although these factors are strongly made, characters as a complete really feel like generic Tudors, flippantly colored in. The Duke of Norfolk (Andrew Woodall), such a potently calculating presence in Morgan’s movie, is a shouty presence right here whereas their mom (Alex Kingston) is cartoonishly villainous, conscripted by patriarchy in pimping out her daughters.
King Henry (James Atherton) barely will get a look-in, which is probably a deliberate resolution, but it surely leaves a dramatic vacuum – there’s little proof of the despotic concern and fervour he generates at court docket. What’s extra successfully conveyed is the thought of “fact” co-opted by tyranny: “The reality is regardless of the king believes to be true,” says Norfolk.
Joanna Parker’s set is good-looking, with projections of color (designed by Dick Straker) poured on to a spare hexagonal stage. They mark shifts between Henry’s court docket and the Boleyns’ Hever Fort. Damoclean swords dangle overhead and round marital beds as symbols of courtly hazard, foreshadowing Anne’s beheading.
The manufacturing’s musicality is one other energy, with singing, lute taking part in and Sixteenth-century dance woven across the drama, which feels virtually Shakespearean. The connection between sisters builds psychological depth within the last hour, as they battle over their completely different ideas of energy and company. It’s gripping, if late within the day.
