Theatre in Review: Wolf Hall, Parts I and II (Winter Garden Theatre)

	Ben Miles. Photo: Johan Persson

Hilary Mantel's world-domination plan continues apace; having penned two best-selling novels -- Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies -- which were turned into West End hits and also a popular BBC series, she now adds Broadway to her many fealties. It's hard to think of any other literary properties that have been disseminated so widely and in such varied forms. There's a very good reason for this: Mantel knows how to tell a cracking good story.

Of course, the world Mantel really dominates is Renaissance England, thanks to her authoritative and highly original retelling of Henry VIII and his world-shaking marriage to Anne Boleyn. It's all there: the dispatching of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, inconveniently the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor; the theological skirmishing with the pope, who isn't about to surrender control of church doctrine; and the scheming by those who stand to either benefit or suffer from Anne's ascension to the throne. Anne's fall is as dizzying as her rise; her failure to provide the male heir Henry so desperately craves leads to scandal, imprisonment, and her eventual beheading, with her cast-off lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, standing in the wings.

It's great stuff, a real-life melodrama that has few equals in history, and it has been recycled to death on stage, film, and television. Mantel's books, however, offer a bracingly original interpretation that blows away the accumulated cobwebs, beginning with the decision to make her protagonist the lawyer Thomas Cromwell. Usually a supporting player, Cromwell is often portrayed as Henry's amoral hatchet man, especially in the case of Thomas More, who, thanks to Robert Bolt's drama A Man for All Seasons, is popularly remembered as a voice of conscience, sent to his grave for refusing to assent to Henry's takeover of the Catholic Church in England. Mantel will have none of this. Her Cromwell is a complex, morally ambiguous figure, and, for all his conniving, far more fascinating than anyone else on stage. Gifted with a startlingly modern sensibility, he moves confidently through this world of political-theological conflict, achieving his policy aims and dispatching his enemies with a ruthless efficiency that would leave Richard III agape with admiration.

Mantel's Cromwell is the son of a blacksmith, his view of the world profoundly influenced by his early years as a soldier for hire, which left him with a horror of warfare. Learning several languages, he builds a successful career as a financier and all-around fixer; returning to England, he becomes a lawyer in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, the Archbishop of York. Nevertheless, Cromwell harbors Protestant sympathies, putting him in direct opposition to Thomas More, here portrayed as a cold-eyed fanatic who uses torture to stamp out heresy. ("Thomas More's living in an age long gone," Cromwell notes mordantly. "He believes you stop men from thinking by burning their books.") Cromwell has a vision of England: "I don't want this country to be like my father's house in Putney -- shouting and fighting all the time. I don't want children growing up on the street. I want it to be a place where everybody knows what he has to do -- and feels safe doing it." But he sees the corrupt world with chilling exactitude and will do whatever it takes to survive in the ever-shifting circumstances of Henry's court.

Mike Poulton's stage adaption is similarly efficient, laying out a complex narrative -- filled with long-simmering rivalries and elegant acts of backstabbing -- and giving it a strong narrative arc. In Part I, Wolf Hall, Henry falls under Anne's spell and Wolsey is given the task of finding a theological justification for replacing Catherine with Anne. This is a tall order, to say the least, given the opposing interests of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, and when Wolsey fails to seal the deal quickly enough, he is stripped of his powers and exiled from court; he soon dies, alone and unmourned by anyone except Cromwell. Instead, Cromwell is deputized to resolve the Anne - Catherine crisis, which he does so skillfully that, for a time, he becomes one of Anne's favorites. But even before Part I has ended, Anne has produced only a girl child -- the future Elizabeth I -- and a stillborn boy, and Henry's ardor for her has begun to cool.

In Part II, Bring Up the Bodies, Anne's position continues to decline. When Henry's attentions turn to Jane Seymour, Cromwell maneuvers Jane and Henry together while undermining Anne's position. Once again, his reasons are complex: He hates Anne for having ruined Wolsey, but he keenly grasps that if Henry dies without an heir, England will collapse into civil war and chaos. He ultimately engineers Anne's removal and death, and, in a stunning turnabout, destroys all of Wolsey's enemies in the process.

Jeremy Herrin's fast-paced, full-blooded staging combines stunning pageantry with scenes of crackling drama and cynical wit. Working on Christopher Oram's spacious thrust stage, surrounded by concrete blocks and with a crucifix-like opening in the upstage wall, Herrin fills the space with a stately court dance; a pair of solemn, snowy winter funerals; scenes of brutal psychological coercion; and a vicious court masque depicting Wolsey as a plaything of the devil. Woven around these are some of the most incisively written scenes to be seen all season, performed with across-the-board brilliance by an enormous company.

The production turns on three superb lead performances. Henry is described early on as the kind of man who believes whatever he says at the moment he says it, a comment Nathaniel Parker seizes on to create a man of wildly changeable moods -- full of merriment and charm and all but devouring Anne with his vulpine smile. Later, on his knees, he is piety itself, terrified that by marrying his sister-in-law, Catherine, he has been abandoned by God. Worn down by the endless maneuvering, he confesses, "Catherine must be worn out by contention. I know I am. She's forever forgiving me. Do you know how wearying that is -- being forgiven, year after year?" But he is also supremely willful, making demands of Cromwell like a spoiled child.

Late in Bring Up the Bodies, Anne is accused of witchcraft, a charge that seems all too plausible in Lydia Leonard's spellbinding performance. By turns witty, charming, and imperious -- she can alter the emotional temperature in a room in less than a second -- she is a figure not to be trifled with, whether flirting with Henry, running in fury from a Catholic ambassador who refuses to recognize her, or turning ashen with shock when final judgment is passed on her. She is especially fascinating as events turn against her and she acts out, turning her fury against anyone in her path and, through her loose behavior, leaving herself open to the gossip of her enemies. Even in her darkest moments, Leonard's Anne is such a compelling figure that it is easy to believe that Henry would risk everything, including his country's place in Christendom, for her.

Towering over it all is the Cromwell of Ben Miles, "cunning as a bag of serpents," a constantly watchful figure who sees through the hypocrisies and lies that surround him and who is willing to bide his time for years, if necessary, before delivering an all-encompassing revenge. He accepts the sneers of courtiers who loathe him for his working-class provenance, and he deftly pays lip service to both civil and religious authorities as he goes about his ugly business of state. But, caught in an argument with Anne, he lets the mask slip just a little, saying, with icy understatement, "If there is anything I can do for you, tell me and I will do it. But do not threaten me, Madam. Do not threaten me." Later, when Anne, faced with death, pleads with him, saying, "You don't believe these charges against me. I know in your heart you do not," his reply is enough to freeze one's blood: "I have never known what is in your heart, Madam. Do not presume to know what is in mine."

Indeed, there is a great deal in Cromwell's heart, including a steadfast love for the wife and children who died young, and an intense devotion to Wolsey, his mentor and friend. Deeply devoted to him are his son, Gregory, and Rafe, his chief clerk. And in scene after scene he is revealed to be deeply thoughtful and filled with complex feelings -- and yet he is also capable of savage cruelty in the pursuit of his ends. Cromwell is a titanic character, intensively layered and riddled with contradictions, and Miles makes him into an enduring object of fascination.

There are many more memorable supporting turns. Lucy Briers' Catherine is stately and bitter in exile from the court, savagely rejecting the offer of life in a convent; Leah Brotherhead's Jane Seymour is a shy, retiring young thing, yet capable of seducing Henry with a murmured comment. Olivia Darnley's Mary Shelton, unhappily married to Anne's brother, provides cutting commentary about Anne's entourage; Nicholas Shaw's Harry Percy, who may or may not have married Anne in secret, is a charming wastrel, subjected to a horrifying Renaissance version of waterboarding. Paul Jesson's Wolsey is delightfully candid about his sins and tragic when he falls to his knees, pathetically grateful for a sign of approval from Henry. Matthew Pidgeon sneers elegantly throughout as Stephen Gardiner, master secretary to Henry and master rival to Cromwell. Giles Taylor's Archbishop Cranmer provides Cromwell with an urbane companion in theological intrigue. And John Ramm's More is every bit as unsettling as Mantel imagined him, whether he is flagellating himself during prayer or going to his grave with an eerie self-possession.

Oram also designed the intensively detailed, historically accurate costumes, which provide the production with its main source of spectacle. The lighting, by Paule Constable (Wolf Hall) and David Plater (Bring Up the Bodies) is equally theatrical, a series of powerful, muscular looks that lend an additional sense of sweep to the production. Nick Powell's sound design provides fine reinforcement for Stephen Warbeck's incidental music; he also provides discreet amplification for the actors, who sound thoroughly natural.

Everyone has collaborated to provide a teeming, crowded canvas of an age poised between savagery and civilization, as an old order dies and a new one is born amid bloodshed and treachery. The two parts of Wolf Hall tell a terrible, unsavory story -- and you won't want to miss a second of it. -- David Barbour