WOLF HALL by Mantel,                      , Author - Hillary Mantel, Director - Jeremy Herinn, Designer - Christopher Oram, Lighting Paule Constable, The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2014, Credit: Johan Persson/

WOLF HALL by Mantel, , Author - Hillary Mantel, Director - Jeremy Herinn, Designer - Christopher Oram, Lighting Paule Constable, The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2014, Credit: Johan Persson/

The prolific director on transforming a literary phenomenon into the most acclaimed Broadway show of the season: The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Wolf Hall: Parts 1 and 2.

British Heritage: How familiar were you with the novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies? Had you read them before the adaptations?

Jeremy Herrin: I’d read the first one before I got asked to consider it, and I hadn’t thought for a second about it being a play. It was just fraught with challenges because it’s such a perfect novel; it sits so grandly in its own medium. So the job to adapt it, to translate it to the stage was really challenging and, you know, fascinating. Sort of a daredevil adventure. Because it seems like it wouldn’t necessarily work, you know?

BH: So what was the most challenging part, then? Taking Cromwell’s perspective from the page or condensing over a thousand pages?

JH: Both of those things, yeah. To actually boil down the amount of events in a sort of narrative, through twists and turns that novels enjoy into a satisfying evening was one challenge, but also the peculiar interiority you’ve got with Cromwell, in that the novels really look through his eyeballs at the world. So it was about how to replicate that intimacy and the sort of structure onto the stage. I found that really, really taxing and pleasing challenges.

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"Cromwell feels like a very contemporary American character to me," says director Jeremy Herrin.[/caption]BH: The response has been incredible in the UK — all the stars! Did that take away pressure, in bringing it to Broadway, or actually add some?

JH: I suppose…I don’t know, it’s a bit of both. You always feel that you always have to start again. You have to start again every evening and there’s no point in resting on your good reviews. Every bit of theater happens in the moment, you know? An audience that turns up, they’re not interested in reviews — they want to see what happens in front of them! And so I suppose it’s that idea that amplifies coming across the Atlantic. What we did have was the sense that we achieved it in two different versions before, and that has given us confidence to try to do this other version at the Winter Garden [Theatre]. But I think theater is dynamic and it’s constantly evolving and it’s in the moment, so it’s great to be set new challenges to get this story across.

BH: Any changes for American audiences, considering some of them, though not British Heritage readers, aren’t as familiar with the history?

JH: I don’t think so. I mean, we’ve made it more efficient and more economic and more elegant, I think. We’ve had a go at getting some scenes down that never worked as well before. Because I think it’s not about doing them for the American audience but it’s about this being our next play. You know, there’s a great phrase: “No work of art is ever finished, it’s only abandoned.” And what doing it in America means is that we all have another go at it. And there’s been no sense of dumbing down. In fact, quite the reverse. We’re amazed and delighted that audiences in New York get a whole lot of really arcane historical references and biblical references that the audiences in London were so far away from understanding. So we’re really flattered and delighted that American audiences are so on it. The one thing we’ve had to do is slow the language down a little bit in order to acclimatize the audience’s ears to the different accents but that’s been a good discipline.

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Photo by Johan Persson[/caption]

BH: That’s very considerate! Do you feel opinions on the Tudors are changing? It feels like the Wolf Hall history is becoming the dominant vision of that past.

JH: I suppose that’s really interesting, isn’t it? I suppose each era and each generation’s look at this period of history will reinterpret it in order to talk more appositely to the times in which bit of work has been played. So Wolf Hall very much reflects our concerns, even if they’re underlying or subliminal. There’s the fact that the books, and the plays and the TV series have gone down so well — it’s because it must say something about how we view the world. … [History is] relative and it’s interpretable and it’s seen through the prism of our own time, particularly when it comes to a sort of story like this where everyone has some relationship with some, or most, of the elements. You know, everybody kind of knows who Henry was and who Anne Boleyn was, but all it take is Hilary to add a new and dynamic actor, Thomas Cromwell, who people have got a whole lot of received opinions about, and suddenly the whole thing flips on its head and the world that you thought you understood, you’re actually looking at it again with fresh eyes. That’s one of the jobs of art, isn’t it? To make us look at the world again and make us consider what we imagine reality and historical reality to be.

BH: Do you think the political agendas speak very much to today?

JH: Well, I think there’s something about Cromwell as a pragmatist, that he’s practical, that he operates within a morally relative space — he’s sort of amoral; he does what needs to be done. He’s a bit of an anti-hero, rather than a hero. And that feels like a very contemporary character. That feels like how we understand Realpolitik to be delivered, you know? Cromwell seems admirable and recognizable on that level.

BH: Do you think he’d be more successful in contemporary American or contemporary British political worlds?

JH: Well, it’s a much of a muchness, I mean, I can imagine him, you know, being the best man New York has ever had. And I can also imagine him running a very successful campaign. I mean, maybe he’d be the one running the campaign behind the charismatic leader. But he’d achieve power! Because he achieved power from the lowest social position possible in a very hierarchically class-defying system. He rose to the very top! Which is remarkable. He was the first person ever to do so. So in that respect, I suppose we’re talking about the English political class, because there’s such a barrier to merit, in some ways, and also there’s a really interesting dialogue about an American sense of class, and how impermanent that is, and how there’s a sense — whether it’s true or not, because history tells us there are presidential dynasties as well as royal families elsewhere in Europe — but there’s a sense that the lowest of the low can rise to the highest point of society. And so I think the plays speak very directly to Americans' sense of themselves. Cromwell feels like a very contemporary American character to me.

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Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell. Photo by Johan Persson[/caption]

BH: Yeah, that’s something we pride ourselves on, though jumping class barriers used to be easier than it is today.

JH: Well, there’s an interesting dialogue about that, isn’t there? Is it illusory? You’ve got another Bush running for president, or at least it looks like he’s going to. And that’s a family power base, isn’t it? The Kennedys and the Clintons, now. The power refracts around itself, and it makes itself more powerful. I suppose that’s all the Tudors were. Henry VII grabbed power through violence, and held on to it, and the events of our play are about the fragility of that power because there’s no male heir. So without the illusion of the divine right of kings being handed down through the male line, Henry VIII starts to panic because the power that his father had fought for was suddenly very, very precariously balanced because there was no male heir to carry the line on. Hence all the events of the play. It boils down to quite a simple lack of “succession planning,” you’d call it in the corporate world now, wouldn’t you?

BH: I heard Hilary Mantel [author of the novels] speak recently about how seeing the production has really influenced her current work [her third Cromwell novel, the upcoming The Mirror and the Light.]

JH: It seems to be true, yes. She seems to be writing all the time. And it’s informed by little moments and little questions. I had a little question the other day about what was one of the actor’s motivations, before we made a decision in the play — quite a big decision about whether one of the characters chooses to back Cromwell or not — and back came this chapter, obviously a chapter from the book, which explains what he was thinking.

BH: A chapter from the new book you mean?

JH: Yes! Because her structure is not linear. She can write a little vignette and a little scene and she’ll then organize all the material and it’ll add up to a satisfying novel. But it means the material can happen at any point in time, in that character’s life. So she’ll be fleshing out old ground as well as new in the next novel.

BH: One of the reviews in The Guardian quoted you about how important it is to you that things keep “moving swiftly.” Did any part need to be cut out in the editing that you wish could have stayed?

JH: There was one thing we did that was hilarious and really good fun, which was Henry singing one of his songs, because he composed songs and poetry. And we had one scene where he sang a song called “The Day Is Delectable,” which is ludicrous and really pointed, because it was right at the point where he was making these very bloody decisions that were affecting people’s existence and survival. And yet there he was playing on his lute a funny little song, but in the interests of momentum we had to sacrifice it. I mean, all sorts. We lost a few characters — we lost an illegitimate son, at one point, which was rather unfortunate. But you can’t do it all, you know. You’ve got to make some choices. You provide the audience with a kind of coherent experience that they can enjoy. There was far too much material, so you’ve got to be a bit ruthless about that.

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Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn. Photo by Johan Persson.[/caption]

BH: Two more questions: You are officially the busiest man in the London theater world, so what’s next? 

JH: I am? Is that official?

BH: It is!

JH: Okay!

BH: So is The Mirror and the Light possibly next for you?

JH: That would be lovely! We’d all be very excited to work on that. It would be thrilling to do further versions of the play that includes a third one. It seems like that would be a way to take it home — a trilogy! That would be terrific! But we’ll have to wait and see what the Dame says about that. Literally what’s next is that I run a company called Headlong in London and I’m doing a new play with the National Theatre. It’s a new play called People, Places and Things. It’s a contemporary play about rehab, so it’s very different from what I’m doing now.

BH: Finally, any tips for American tourists heading to the West End or elsewhere?

JH: I recommend they see the Headlong production of The Nether at the Duke of York’s [Theater] which runs until April.

BH: Oh, the New York production of that play just ended.

JH: This was a production I directed. It transferred from the Royal Court and has been running commercially quite successfully at the West End, and that’s on for another month. And then come and see People, Places and Things at the National Theater that’s running over the summer. And since we’re talking about Wolf Hall, I recommend a boat trip to Hampton Court Palace. It’s a magnificent way to get there and it really puts you in the mindset of 16th century London.

Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2 opens at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City on April 9, 2015. For more information, go to wolfhallbroadway.com.