After critically acclaimed runs at both Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aldwych Theatre in London, the hugely successful Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2 will arrive on Broadway on the first day of spring, Friday 20th March 2015, and thus officially usher in the spring season. The productions will continue playing to packed houses in the West End until Saturday 4 October.
Based on the best selling novels by Dame Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2 will invite theatre goers to be part of a unique theatrical experience, similar to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s award winning production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2 are adapted by Mike Poulton from Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize winning novels, Wolf Hall andBring Up the Bodies. The plays are based on the deceit, betrayal, and intrigue of the court of Henry VIII. The production features a company of more than twenty actors, headed by Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell, Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn, and Nathaniel Parker as King Henry VIII, all under the direction of Olivier Award nominee Jeremy Herrin, who makes his New York City directing début. The Royal Shakespeare Company is appearing with the permission of Actors’ Equity Association.
The production will also feature scenic and costume design by Christopher Oram, lighting design by Paule Constable(Part 1) and David Plater (Part 2), sound design by Nick Powell, and music by Stephen Warbeck.
The opening day of Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2 will be held on Thursday 9th April 2015 at the Winter Garden Theatre (1634 Broadway, between 50th and 51st Streets).
HILARY MANTEL (Novelist) is the author of eleven novels, two short story collections and a memoir, Giving Up The Ghost. She writes both historical and contemporary fiction, and her settings range from a South African township under apartheid to Paris in the Revolution, from a city in twentieth century Saudi Arabia to rural Ireland in the eighteenth century. Her novel Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII. It won the 2009 Man Booker prize, the inaugural Walter Scott prize, and in the US won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bring Up The Bodies won the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. Taken togther Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies have sold over three million copies and have been translated into thirty-six languages. She is working on The Mirror & The Light, the third book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. In 2014 she was created a Dame.
MIKE POULTON (Adaptor). His current and recent plays, adaptations, and translations for the stage include: Ibsen’s Ghostsat Clwyd Theatr Cymru; A Tale of Two Cities at The Royal and Derngate, Northampton; Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool at The Old Vic, London; Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies; Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at The Print Room; Schiller’sLuise Miller at The Donmar; de Filippo’s Sindaco at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and on tour; Euripides’ The Bacchae at The Royal Exchange, Manchester; Judgement Day at The Print Room, London; Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Tokyo, Osaka, and at Sadler’s Wells in London); Malory’s Morte d’Arthur for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon; Schiller’s Wallenstein for the Chichester Festival Theatre; Don Carlos (directed by Michael Grandage at the Sheffield Crucible and in the West End); a two-part adaptation of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End, at the Kennedy Center Washington D.C., and on tour in England and Spain; and The York Mysteries in York Minster. Previous Broadway productions include: Uncle Vanya; Turgenev’s Fortunes Fool (nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play). Productions off Broadway and elsewhere in the United States include The Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran at The Eisenhower Theater, The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.); The Dance of Death, by Red Bull Theatre Co at the Lucille Lortel Theatre; Rosmersholm at The Pearl Theatre and Ghosts by Bas Bleu Theatre Co in Fort Collins, Colorado.
JEREMY HERRIN (Director) is Artistic Director of Headlong, and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He trained at both the National Theatre and Royal Court, where he became Deputy Artistic Director in 2009 until 2012. Between 2000 and 2008 he was Associate Director at Live Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne. Jeremy's first production for Headlong was the European Premiere of Jennifer Haley's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winning play, The Nether, in a co-production at the Royal Court. Jeremy has also recently directed the world premiere of Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies in two parts for the RSC, which transferred to the West End in May 2014. Jeremy has directed several productions at the Royal Court including That Face by Polly Stenham, which transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End. He was nominated for an Evening Standard Best Director Award for Stenham’s second play Tusk Tusk in 2009. Other work at the Court includes Stenham’s No Quarter, E V Crowe’s Hero and Kin, Anya Reiss's first play Spur of the Moment, Richard Bean’s The Heretic, Michael Wynne’s The Priory, which won an Olivier award for Best Comedy and David Hare’s The Vertical Hour. Other theatre directing credits include Another Country (Chichester/West End), the critically acclaimed This House by James Graham at the National Theatre, for which he was nominated for an Olivier award for Best Director, The Tempest at the Globe, David Hare’s South Downs at Chichester Festival Theatre subsequently transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre, Uncle Vanya with Roger Allam at Chichester, Absent Friends at the Harold Pinter and Much Ado About Nothing with Eve Best and Charles Edwards at the Globe. Jeremy was also named as one of the Stage top 100 in 2014.
JEFFREY RICHARDS and JERRY FRANKEL (Producers) have been producing theatre together for the past 15 years, and this will mark their 40th production. The pair are currently represented on Broadway with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill and You Can’t Take It With You. Past productions include All the Way (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards),The Realistic Joneses, The Glass Menagerie, Glengarry Glen Ross, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards), The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Drama Desk/Outer Critics Circle noms. and Tony Award),Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (Drama Desk and Tony Awards), The Merchant of Venice (Drama Desk and Tony noms.), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Race, Superior Donuts, reasons to be pretty (Drama Desk and Tony Award noms.), Hair (Drama Desk and Tony Awards), Blithe Spirit (Drama Desk nom.), You’re Welcome America (Tony Award nom), Speed-the-Plow, November, The Homecoming (Tony Award nom.), August: Osage County (Drama Desk and Tony Awards), Radio Golf(Drama Desk nom and Tony Award), Talk Radio (Drama Desk and Tony Award noms.), Spring Awakening (Drama Desk and Tony Awards), and The Pajama Game (Drama Desk nom. and Tony Award) among others.
MATTHEW BYAM SHAW, NIA JANIS AND NICK SALMON for PLAYFUL (Producer). As Producer and General Manager Playful’s productions include: Shrek The Musical UK & Ireland Tour, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies (Aldwych Theatre),The Weir (Wyndham’s Theatre), The Audience (Gielgud Theatre) which was also a record breaking, worldwide digital broadcast with NT Live, South Downs/The Browning Version (Harold Pinter Theatre), Sweeney Todd (Adelphi Theatre), Hay Fever (Noël Coward Theatre), The King’s Speech (UK tour and Wyndham’s Theatre), Flare Path (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Yes, Prime Minister (Gielgud Theatre, Apollo Theatre, Trafalgar Studios and three UK tours), Krapp’s Last Tape(Duchess Theatre) and Red (Broadway). As General Manager productions include: Blithe Spirit (Gielgud Theatre), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Wicked (Apollo Victoria Theatre, UK and Ireland tour), Dirty Dancing(Aldwych Theatre, UK tour and Piccadilly Theatre), Shrek The Musical (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Million Dollar Quartet(Noël Coward Theatre) and Clybourne Park (Wyndham’s Theatre).
Prior to Playful, productions include: Mary Stuart (Apollo Theatre and Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway), Legally Blonde The Musical (Savoy Theatre), Hamlet (Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway), Spring Awakening (Lyric, Hammersmith and Novello Theatre), Don Carlos (Gielgud Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Roundhouse, UK tour, US tour and Australia tour), Sinatra at the London Palladium (London Palladium and UK tour), Humble Boy (Gielgud Theatre, UK tour and MTC), Anything Goes (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Boeing-Boeing (Comedy Theatre, UK tour and Longacre Theatre, Broadway) and Frost/Nixon (Gielgud Theatre and Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Broadway).
THE SHUBERT ORGANIZATION has been at the forefront of the American theatre since the start of the 20th century. Over the years, hundreds of Shubert productions have been presented on Broadway and in theatres across the country. Under the leadership of Philip J. Smith, Chairman and Robert E. Wankel, President, the company currently owns and operates seventeen Broadway theatres.
Notable Shubert productions and co-productions include Cats, Sunday in the Park with George, Dreamgirls, The Heidi Chronicles, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Amadeus, Children of a Lesser God, The Grapes of Wrath, Ain’t Misbehavin’, A Few Good Men, God of Carnage, Lucky Guy, and Spamalot.
