In 2009, Hilary Mantel’s epic historical novel about the rise, and future fall, of Thomas Cromwell took the literary world by storm. Now on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Wolf Hall has reached Broadway. Imported from the Swan Theatre via a stage on the West End, British royalty has come to the Great White Way.
The complex six-hour political saga is told in two parts—the British productions referred to Part One as Wolf Hall and Part Two as Bring Up The Bodies, a distinction removed in New York—each divided into two acts that follow the dissolution of Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon, his doomed marriage to Anne Boleyn, and his flirtation with soon-to-be-third wife, Jane Seymour. Adapted by Mike Poulton from Mantel’s novels, the new plays blend Shakespearean-style scale and history with a somewhat modern sensibility, following the rise of middle-class Cromwell to the very heights of English, and in some ways, world power.
The setting for the mammoth production, designed by Christopher Oram, who received a 2015 Tony Award for the costumes and was nominated for the scenery, is an austere, harsh world in which the people and their costumes provide the strongest source of color. The angled walls that flank each side of the pointed stage and Brutalist dark gray, concrete-like structures pierced-through with openings are reminiscent of medieval castle walls. Fire shoots from grates in the floor, and the light behind the slashed back wall reveals, at times, a cross looming through the darkness. Overhead, a grid-like structure of three-dimensional open cubes hovers above the action. The minimalism of the space enhances the focus on the action.
Oram became involved with Wolf Hall the old fashioned way. “On a basic level, it was simply a matter of a job offer, but there were many long gestating undercurrents that brought us there, including a longstanding relationship with the producers at Playful, a long-held desire to return to the RSC, and a strong desire to work with Jeremy [Herrin, the director],” he explains. Like many people, Oram also loves the source material and saw the offer “as the fulfillment of a desire to work on a project of that scale, ambition, and detail, and the opportunity to work with Hilary, too.”
A Brutalist Setting
Wolf Hall arrived in New York via a wildly successful previous production. In this case, there were runs at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre and at Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End, but the process of bringing these plays to light has not been a static one. Oram emphasizes, “In spite of its historical subject matter and classical form, these are, in fact, new plays, so the development process was like that of any new writing: lots of major shifts and turns in the structures of them; characters, scenes, and, indeed, even entire plot lines cut in order to better tell the story. The early meetings were fluid, dynamic, and exciting, full of potential and ambition, tempered with the actual practicalities of how to stage these two epic novels turned plays.”
Oram notes that, as the production has moved from Stratford, to London, and finally to New York, it has developed and matured. “On a basic level, it has gotten physically bigger, as each subsequent space it has inhabited has grown in size,” he says. “The Winter Garden is at least three times bigger than its original home at the Swan in Stratford.” In this case, that growth seems to have been good. “The increasingly larger spaces emphasize the scale of the history, the story, and the drama,” Oram adds.
For the production team of Wolf Hall, there could have been any number of road blocks to creating a cohesive and watchable production of this scale, but the singular vision of the production allowed the team to problem solve as they would any new play and to find the elements that this story needed to be told. One thing that the production didn’t need was the overwhelming presence of technology. “Somewhat in keeping with the historical nature of the subject and the classical nature of the plays, we consciously choose not to go down a digital or technological route for the productions,” says Oram. “As such, the set itself, in spite of being modernist and formed of concrete blocks, is, in reality, brilliant scenic artistry, done upstate by Hudson Scenic.”
For Oram, the biggest challenges weren’t technical, but dramaturgical, especially doing justice to Mantel and the characters. “The books are beloved and respected, and all of our energies were put into making sure we did right by them and by her. To have taken those two titanic novels and to have condensed and recreated them as stage plays is something I, and I know the entire creative team, are very proud of.”
Stay tuned for the lighting design in Part Two.
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