RSC wins rights to stage Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell novels

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/jan/23/rsc-rights-stage-hilary-mantel

Version 0 of 1.

Gregory Doran has a good idea of who could play what will be one of the most sought-after theatrical parts of recent years. Common sense suggests it needs to be a man – almost certainly in his late 40s, probably slightly cushioned – who has the look of a murderer. Unfortunately the new artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company is not letting on who he has in mind. "I wish I could tell you," he said on Wednesday.

The role in question is Thomas Cromwell and the issue arose as Doran announced a major coup: that the RSC had won the rights to stage versions of Hilary Mantel's two blockbusting novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Doran said he was thrilled. "Roger Michell [the director] texted me to say: 'Congratulations on getting the hottest literary property in the western world,'" he said.

The big question now is who will play the blacksmith's son Cromwell, the conniving and all-powerful chief minister to Henry VIII? To be historically accurate the actor would have to be aged around his late 40s and be able to powerfully convey Cromwell's astonishing self-confidence and rather terrifying menace. In Wolf Hall Cromwell looks at the less-than-flattering portrait that Hans Holbein has produced and says: "I look like a murderer," to which his son Gregory responds: "Didn't you know?"

So slightly younger versions of Simon Russell Beale or Kenneth Branagh then. Sam West perhaps? Or given Daniel Craig's professed desire to perform new work on stage perhaps he could be persuaded to add a few pounds?

On film one of the best remembered Cromwells is Leo McKern in the 1968 movie A Man for All Seasons, while the most recent is the considerably dishier James Frain in the US TV series The Tudors. Other actors to have played the role on film and TV include Donald Pleasance, Ron Cook and perhaps most memorably of all Kenneth Williams in the 1971 film Carry On Henry with lines that included him telling the king: "There is one thing you haven't touched yet." To which Sid James replies: "Oh, we're back to the wife again."

That line is unlikely to make it to Stratford but Doran said Mantel had promised extra material for the two plays scheduled to premiere in January 2014. The novelist came to see David Edgar's play Written on the Heart, about the creation of the King James bible 400 years ago, and she "got very excited about the Swan theatre and Stratford and the RSC and the great thing is that she's so inspired by the idea of finding a theatrical language for her books that she's promised to put all sort of bits in that she left out of the novels."

Getting the rights to stage Mantel's novels is undoubtedly a coup, a fact that Doran readily acknowledged. Mantel's first two instalments of her planned Tudor trilogy have been a literary sensation, winning her stellar book sales and literary prizes that may well be added to next week when she is the bookmakers' favourite to add the Costa book of the year award to her collection. As well as the stage versions, a BBC TV series by the scriptwriter Peter Straughan is also in the pipeline.

The books are being adapted for the stage by Mike Poulton and will be directed by Jeremy Herrin in the Swan theatre – the ideal venue, said Doran. "The Swan allows the epic and it allows the intimate and what Hilary Mantel does is put the intimate in the context of the epic … she tells it from the sidelines and the interior worlds of those people. You hear those voices, you want those voices expressed."

In a video interview Mantel said putting the novels on stage was the next logical step as she had always thought of them as "gigantic plays". She said it was wonderful that the RSC was taking them on, recalling how, as a 15-year-old, she made her way to Stratford by herself and saw four plays in three days. "It was a shaping experience, so it really is a dream come true for me to have the opportunity to see the RSC present my plays … I don't say that lightly."

As well as Mantel, Doran announced that he would once again direct David Tennant, five years after they collaborated on a Hamlet that the Guardian's Michael Billington described as "one of the most richly textured, best-acted versions of the play we have seen in years".

This time the play is Richard II, which could provide even greater challenges than Hamlet, widely regarded as the "Everest" of Shakespearean roles, said Doran.

There were sides to Richard II, with his volatility and fragility, that would be "more alien to David's character and make the play more of a challenge, perhaps, to do."

It will open at the Royal Shakespeare theatre in October before travelling to the RSC's former London home, the Barbican – a mini-sensation of sorts given the acrimony there was when, in 2002, the then artistic director Adrian Noble decided to pull out of the venue.

The RSC has been looking for a permanent London home since, although it has nomadically and successfully staged shows at the Roundhouse and a number of West End theatres. The return to the Barbican will stoke talk of the romance being reignited full-time, although Doran insisted: "I can lay my hand on my heart and say that Nicholas Kenyon [managing director of the Barbican] and I have had no conversations at all about anything other than Richard II being right in this space at this time."

Doran, who succeeded Michael Boyd, announced general details of what was in effect a five-year plan hinged on two important dates: the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth in 2014 and the 400th anniversary of his death in 2016. He said productions of Shakespeare's entire canon would be staged in the Royal Shakespeare theatre in the next five years.