The Targaryens have come to town. The Royal Shakespeare Company's new production, Game of Thrones: The Mad King, is now playing in the UK's Stratford-Upon-Avon, and it's a hugely ambitious, intensely immersive spectacle that every George R.R. Martin fan should experience at least once.
Adapted by Duncan MacMillan and directed by Dominic Cooke, the play is set just before the events of the original novels (and TV show) and chronicles the fateful tourney at Harrenhal. This occasion saw Rhaegar Targaryen crown Lyanna Stark the queen of love and beauty – and kickstart a bloody civil war that ended with Robert Baratheon ascending the Iron Throne and the Targaryen line near-annihilated.
The play is stunningly grand in its approach, choosing not just to adapt the tourney itself but also the entirety of Robert's Rebellion. The result is a breathtaking, engaging, and thrilling 3 hours and 40 minutes of action, drama, and tragedy.
Welcome to Westeros
On approach to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, on a beautiful sunny summer's day in William Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-Upon-Avon, a digital sign above the entrance way welcomed me to Westeros. Inside the auditorium itself, the immersion began immediately: moody ambient music played in the background and a brazier in the center of the stage – two intersecting catwalks with the audience seated all around – crackled with flames. It helped that I was seated so close to one of these catwalks that my shoulder was literally touching its edge, truly part of the action.
Indeed, from the very first scene, which introduces Rhaegar Targaryen riding on horseback to the boom of dramatic music and the blaze of bright lights, it was impossible to think of anything but what was unfolding on stage only inches away.
The scale of the production is simply staggering: the horses are massive puppets that move seamlessly down the stage under the guidance of multiple puppeteers, the costumes range from lush gowns to sturdy armor with beautifully painted house sigils, and the action is impeccably choreographed. I was not merely watching Westeros: I was in Westeros, a bystander to legendary points of the Seven Kingdoms' history, powerless to intervene as tragedy and triumph alike unfolded before me.
The production makes full use of its massive set-up, too: one group of characters might be delivering dialogue while two Kingsguard knights lurk in the background, heads bent together, scheming quietly. For while the tourney is a pageant for the ages, it's also a chance for Rhaegar to overthrow his father Aerys Targaryen, better known as the Mad King.
Classic Thrones
The first act of the play recalls classic Game of Thrones – with hints of this year's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, thanks to its tourney setting – because of its interest in such character moments and the realm's complicated politics. Like early Thrones, Act 1 revels in putting its players together and letting them talk. This is where Harmony Rose Bremner's Lyanna Stark shines: Lyanna has always felt like a shadow of a woman in A Song of Ice and Fire to me, since so much of her story is wrapped in mystery and her untimely death. In The Mad King, she is beautifully, joyfully alive, a bold and outspoken sister to the Stark brothers and a wilful character who wants to forge her own destiny, chafing at the life of a traditional highborn lady and her betrothal to Robert Baratheon.
Bremner's Lyanna has true chemistry with Noah Ritter's Rhaegar, too: a standout scene comes when Rhaegar asks her to dance, and Lyanna admits she's more of a fighter than a dancer. Undeterred, Rhaegar teaches her the steps as if they were sparring, and so the spark of a momentous romance and the coming rebellion is born.
Rhaegar, too, comes to fascinating life in the play, a mournful, serious young prince who feels the weight of destiny and duty alike. He believes himself to be the Prince that was Promised, but he also, far more practically, knows his father is unfit to rule and the time to seize the crown is now.
Other standouts include Elizabeth Ayodele's confident and complex Elia Martell, Michael Abubakar's utterly endearing Eddard Stark (who spends Act 1 insisting on being called Ned, worlds away from the grim, duty-driven man we meet in the main series), and Maxim Ays's young, conflicted Jaime Lannister, but it's Michael Shaeffer's Mad King who truly steals the show.
Shaeffer's Aerys is humanized to an almost painful degree, introduced with wildly long hair, fingernails like claws, and covered in gashes from sitting on the Iron Throne. He's a capricious, cruel, and often hilarious monarch, but one who can be overcome with trauma and grief, and one who loves his eldest son – his only redeeming quality. Maybe the most moving scene in the entire play is a quiet but forceful moment between Rhaegar and his father, as Rhaegar cuts the Mad King's unruly hair and trims his horrifying nails.
Robert's Rebellion
It's in Act 2 that The Mad King perhaps finally overreaches itself. Act 1 works beautifully because it's a contained, character-driven story, but when the show expands to the action of Robert's Rebellion, almost by design it loses some of this closeness. Naturally, a stage show can't capture the entirety of a brutal civil war, which means we are served only snapshots. I can't help feeling like something is lost by the play glossing over the actual outbreak of the civil war, instead picking up after Robert's Rebellion has begun, too.
Characters are separated by geography, so conversation is swapped for communicating via raven, and often the players react to things they hear second-hand rather than being directly involved. But the action remains superb (the fateful clash at the Trident in particular is astonishing) and the show still finds time for deeply moving, intimate moments – the women of the play singing a hymn to the Mother, begging for protection for their sons and daughters in a time of war, brought a tear to my eye.
It's here that Ays's Jaime Lannister becomes most compelling, too, as his conscience wars with his duty. Ays's take on the character is more innocent than the Jaime of the main series, and watching his development as the war and the Mad King both spiral out of control is heartbreaking and deeply captivating.
The wars to come
What I was most intrigued by heading into The Mad King was its potential for seismic lore revelations, and I was not disappointed. Mysteries that have fuelled fan speculation for decades are finally unveiled (I even overheard one happy theatregoer telling another that the play answered every question he had on the way out). This means that The Mad King isn't very newcomer-friendly, which is no real surprise, and is also something of a strength: no time is wasted recapping plot points or the relationships between characters we know well already. However, the sheer wonder on display is likely more than enough to enthral anyone less familiar with the lore.
The biggest barrier to watching The Mad King is, of course, its location, and, after being so completely blown away, I'm hoping a West End and Broadway future is on the horizon – as well as a professional recording for those who still can't make the trek – because this extraordinary production deserves to be seen by the biggest audience possible.
But Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, with all their historical and dramatic pedigree, truly feel like the truest of homes for this play: the drama and tragedy are fittingly Shakespearean, after all.
For 3 hours and 40 minutes, I was fully transported to another world of knights and dragons and magic as Martin's incredible fantasy realm came to life before my eyes – and that's worth every mile of the journey.
Game of Thrones: The Mad King is playing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from now until September 5, 2026.
You can keep up to date with the world of Westeros with our guide to all the upcoming Game of Thrones movies and TV shows.
