Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies Opening Night
On Saturday 17th May, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies celebrated their opening night at the Aldwych Theatre. After the performance, creative team, cast and guests headed to The Royal Horseguards in Whitehall for a party.
Following a sell-out run at the RSC’s Swan Theatre, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies open at the Aldwych Theatre. This is the first time Hilary Mantel’s enormously popular books have been adapted for the stage. Adapted by Mike Poulton and directed by Jeremy Herrin, the two plays tell the compelling story of the political rise to power of Thomas Cromwell from blacksmith’s boy to Henry VIII’s right hand man.
The West End company includes Ben Miles as Cromwell, Nathaniel Parker as Henry VIII, Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn, Paul Jesson as Cardinal Wolsey and Lucy Briers as Katherine of Aragon.
Wolf Hall won the Man Booker in 2009, and Bring Up the Bodies won in 2012, making Hilary Mantel the first woman ever to have received the award twice, and the first person to win the prize for two consecutive novels of the same series. She achieved another first recently when Bring Up the Bodies also won the Costa Novel Award, the first time the same novel has won both this and the Man Booker.

Read our interview with Lydia Leonard
LISTINGS
Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
A new dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s novels by Mike Poulton
Directed by Jeremy Herrin
Designed by Christopher Oram
Lighting Design for Wolf Hall is by Paule Constable
Lighting Design for Bring Up the Bodies is by David Plater
Music is by Stephen Warbeck
Sound Design is by Nick Powell
Movement is by Siân Williams
Fights by Bret Yount
Casting is by Helena Palmer CDG
Aldwych Theatre, 49 Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF
1st May to 6th September 2014
Monday 19th May 2014