Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, after Hans Holbein the Younger, early 17th century. Photo: National Portrait Gallery, London.
I may be a tad over excited this morning as I managed to acquire tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies next winter at the Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.
Tickets are selling out quickly and it took a lot of chagrin, woe and juggling of schedules to be able to see both plays in the correct order on the same day but I got there in the end. Although now I am feeling a bit faint at the prospect of seeing Wolf Hall in the afternoon and then having a short break before Bring up the Bodies in the evening. That’s a LOT of Thomas Cromwell action!
I have NO idea who will actually be appearing in the productions but am expecting a pretty strong cast. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
It’ll be so worth it though.
Like I said, tickets are starting to selling out (I believe that the Stratford production of Richard II with David Tennant was pretty much totally sold out last night after just twelve hours of the tickets being on sale!) so I’d move swiftly to get them – especially if you plan to do the same as me and see both plays on the same day as that was already pretty problematic last night.
(Don’t forget that in the meantime there’s also the BBC production of Wolf Hall to come. I’m really pleased that they cast Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, although it makes me feel VERY OLD as I remember seeing him play Romeo in a RSC production of Romeo and Juliet many MANY years ago.)
