Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies

Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. The fate of Henry VIII ’s wives is one of the few chapters of English history I thought I’d cracked. Until I read Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, almost 1,100 intricately written pages about the deadly machinations at the court of King Henry, refracted through the brilliant mind of his right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a Putney blacksmith who rose to power.

Mantel’s inspired retelling of a chunk of history, covering wives one, two and hinting at the third, made history when both novels won the Man Booker Prize. A BBC serial is in the pipeline, with Mark Rylance playing Cromwell. But the Royal Shakespeare Company has beaten them to it, with Mike Poulton’s adaptation, a triumph of compression and clarity, casting light in the murkiest corners and darkest corridors of power.

Of course there are losses in the passage from page to stage: the poetic texture of Mantel’s prose, the sounds (creaking trees, whinnying horses, snuffling dogs), the smells (blood, mud, bodies), the sights (sumptuous costumes, no scenery). But there are gains: Poulton’s pared-down narrative is less demanding than the weighty original (which defeated many), for it does much of the work, presenting the vibrant characters fully formed.

Jeremy Herrin’s spare, pacy production keeps a tight focus on the watchful Cromwell, not always centre-stage but everpresent in the shadows. A beady-eyed Ben Miles suggests Cromwell’s forensic intelligence (like Mantel, he was a trained lawyer). His service to the King (an imposing Nathaniel Parker, who exudes entitlement) seems admirable. Sympathetic as we are to the bitter, pious Katherine of Aragon (excellent Lucy Briers) punished for her failure to have a son, we can see the attraction of Anne Boleyn, a quicksilver creature (Lydia Leonard).

But his grief over the deaths (from the plague) of his beloved wife Lizzie and two daughters renders him an isolated figure. A more ruthless Cromwell emerges in the climactic scene in which, partly out of revenge for Anne’s destruction of his patron Cardinal Wolsey, he runs intellectual rings around a dim-witted court favourite, Mark Smeaton, and frames Anne as a strumpet, and heads start to roll.

Meanwhile, the King’s mooning over Leah Brotherhead’s milksop Jane Seymour. ‘There are no endings. They are all beginnings,’ says wily Cromwell. I can’t wait for Mantel’s next volume – and Poulton’s version.

Until 29 March at Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: 0844-800 1110, www.rsc.org.uk