RSC to stage Mantel novels

Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are to be adapted for stage as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2013 winter season, with some previously unseen material by the author included.  

The books, published by Fourth Estate, have been adapted for the stage in two parts by Mike Poulton and the productions will be directed by Jeremy Herrin, the associate director at The Royal Court. The plays will run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon from next December to March 2014.

RSC artistic director Gregory Doran said: “Hilary Mantel has been working alongside us to find a genuine theatrical language for these plays, even promising to include material she left out of the books in order to do so. The gripping tale of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power under Henry VII, and the King’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn, has captivated readers in their thousands, and I am thrilled to bring them to our stages.”