Monday 19 May 2014

Wolf Hall at Aldwych Theatre

If you haven't read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and its equally brilliant sequel Bring Up the Bodies I highly recommend you get a crack on and read them. They chart the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, a powerful minister in the court of Henry VII.   

I was so ridiculously excited when I found out the RSC was adapting the books for the stage and was thrilled when the production came to London. 

Aldwych theatre, Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, RSC, production, review, Row AA seat 3, 4, restricted view, tickets

I felt incredibly lucky when me and my mum managed to get tickets to see the Saturday matinee, and even more when we got them for a bargain £10. However, as soon as we got to Aldwych theatre we realised we hadn't bagged ourselves a bargain at all. 

We bought the tickets fully aware they were restricted view, what we didn't realise that 'restricted' in this case meant no view. We were devastated. When we bought the tickets we consulted the theatre map and to our understanding it looked like we were in the top section, at the front and far to the right, we assumed we would have a bar or a railing partially obscuring our view. We we're even on proper seats, we faced the audience rather than the stage, and only could see a tiny slither of stage and only if we cramped up against the wall and contorted our bodies to lean over the railing. In my opinion these tickets should not have been on sale. For future reference our tickets were AA seat 3 and 4. DO NOT BUY THESE TICKETS. 

So I don't feel I can probably review the production as I didn't really see it and therefore can't really comment on the staging, performances or even costumes. All I can say is it sounded good, and despite the disastrous tickets, we did enjoy ourselves. I'm hoping we can get some decent tickets for Bring Up the Bodies so we can have the proper experience. 


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