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A new prequel to George RR Martin’s blockbuster fantasy saga Game of Thrones is to be staged this summer by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The bestselling author, whose novels have been turned into a juggernaut TV franchise, said the RSC was the “obvious choice” to put on the play, Game of Thrones: The Mad King, because Shakespeare had been a constant source of inspiration to him. “Not only that, he faced similar challenges in how to put a battle on stage,” added Martin. “So we are in good company.”
The play has been a long time coming: its adapter Duncan Macmillan and director Dominic Cooke were first announced in 2021 as collaborating on a Game of Thrones project for an unspecified venue. In a statement today, the pair said: “George’s storytelling is Shakespearean in its scale and its themes: dynastic struggle, ambition, rebellion, madness, prophecy, ill-fated love. From the beginning, Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies have been our primary reference for the ambition of this production, so the RSC feels like a natural home.”
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, the RSC’s co-artistic directors since 2023, said the new play’s “epic cycle of warring families sits in a continuum with Shakespeare’s history cycles”. They added that the play will explore “the true nature of authority through the lens of young people grappling with inherited identities”.
Martin, who will serve as executive producer, has already visited the company’s headquarters in Stratford and is said to have greatly enjoyed his trip to the armoury department. “I never imagined that it would be anything other than a book,” he said of the novel A Game of Thrones, which was published in 1996 and began a series with the collective title A Song of Ice and Fire. “It was a place for my imagination to exist without limits,” he continued. “To my great surprise, it was adapted for a [TV] series, and viewers have been able to enter the world of my imagination through the medium of television. For my work to now be adapted for the stage is something I did not expect but welcome with great enthusiasm and excitement.”
Produced by HBO, Game of Thrones ran for eight seasons from 2011-19 and has already inspired major prequels for television: House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The play takes place over a decade before the events of Game of Thrones and will feature familiar characters from the houses of Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Martell. A promotional synopsis states: “A long winter thaws in Harrenhal, and spring is promised. At a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament, lovers meet and revellers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, amid growing unease at the bloodthirsty actions of the realm’s merciless Mad King, dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot. Far away, the drums of battle sound.”
Several of the actors who starred in the TV series appeared with the RSC earlier in their careers, among them Julian Glover, Diana Rigg, Sean Bean, Charles Dance and Iain Glen. Casting and dates for the new play have not yet been announced; tickets will be available from April. It is to be staged in the RSC’s main auditorium, the Royal Shakespeare theatre, which seats just over 1,000 theatregoers.
Some say theatres are staging too many adaptations of hit novels and TV series, but the RSC will be hoping to attract new audiences with such a franchise, much as it has with its triumphant version of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbour Totoro, which opened at the Barbican in 2022 and has been running in the West End for a year. The company has recently been seeking to reduce its workforce and considering other savings to tackle a financial shortfall.
Macmillan, whose plays include Lungs, and Cooke, who is about to take over as the Almeida theatre’s new artistic director, said: “It will be thrilling for us to share this new play with audiences, both those that know and love George’s books and HBO’s series but also audiences who know nothing and want to come and experience something both beautifully intimate and truly epic.”
