Anne Boleyn

Synopsis

Compelling, witty and often laugh-out-loud funny, this celebration of a great English heroine, Anne Boleyn leaps cunningly between generations to reveal the debt the outrageous yet scholarly James I owed to Anne when he reconciled England s religious factions by creating his common, ?authorised Bible. Hunting through an old chest, the newly crowned James discovers the controversial legacy of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII s notorious second wife. Time jumps back 70 years, when the witty and flirtatious Anne was in love with Henry, but also with the most dangerous ideas of her day. Conspiring with the exiled William Tyndale, she plots to make England Protestant. For ever.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 29 July 2010

“With her head tucked underneath her arm,” ran the old music hall song, and Howard Brenton’s muscular new history play begins with Miranda Raison pointing at a bloody bag and asking us, “Do you want to see it?”

She eventually reveals the legendary bonce but first teases us by whipping out the Bible that put her in the Tower – the heretical, Lutheran version by the West Country scholar William Tyndale that she championed.

And then, oddly, King James VI of Scotland, and First of England, minces hilariously into view with a rail of stunning frocks owned by his predecessor on the throne, Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, or, as he calls, her “the Boleyn witch.”

The play unravels backwards to the start of Henry VIII’s wooing of the French-educated Anne at a court masque, where Anne adopts the morality role of “Perseverance” and holds the fascinated suitor at bay; until the interval, when she de...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 27 July 2010:

Fortunately the rain held off for the matinee of Anne Boleyn but it is easy to pour cold water on Howard Brenton's interpretation of this fascinating figure. Although Anne was a protestant when that spelt danger the play overstates her influence over Henry VIII who was a very sophisticated religious thinker long before his tyrannical side took over. There is too much emphasis given to Thomas Cromwell and it is bizarre that Thomas More does not appear at all. The ending is horribly rushed which leads to confusion over why fate turned so suddenly and treachorously against Anne and Brenton makes no attempt to consider if any of the accusations against her might have had some truth. Finally, as almost always, Henry is hopelessly miscast as a still young, slim and virile king. However, even Shakespeare is historically unreliable and if taken as a piece of dramatic fiction the play is very entertaining. Given a slightly irrelevant but uproarious framimg device of the court of James VI, Brenton offers a conventional but intriguing version of this controversial queen. Miranda Raison, so good even if uncredited in Spooks, is a bewitching and spirited Anne and it is easy to see why Cromwell declares that everyone was in love with her. Anne Boleyn is confused and confusing at times but it fits very well into the Kings and Rogues Globe season....

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