Westeros

The theater grew dark, save for a flame in the middle of set designer Chloe Lamford’s cross-shaped stage. Two servants of House Whent, dressed in the yellow and black livery, marched out purposefully from the doors beneath where I sat in the Circle, down the long, long way to the great tall doors that represented the gates of Harrenhal. There was an ominous sound beyond, of many feet and hoofs, coming nearer, nearer. The doors were thrust open, and an intense light from lighting designer Jon Clark flooded through, limning the figures that followed: men and women bearing the strange three-headed red dragon on black, a tall man with silver hair on a great horse, a smaller man behind him, each dismounting before passing out of sight. On and on the procession went, a litter bearing a pregnant princess carried by attendants, her own attendants following her. Above, crows (or ravens?) flew, cawing, wings flapping. A dog sniffed the heels of the horses, chased away some commoner.

So began Game of Thrones: The Mad King, the immersive, epic play based on George R.R. Martin’s deep history for A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke. This long procession featured many of the elements of what the play would unveil over its 3 hour, 40 minute run time (including a 20 minute interval): the wondrous puppetry and movement of Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell of Lume, costume designer Georgia McGuinness’s bold pop-modernist color blocking in the heraldry, the drama of composer Will Stuart’s music and Tom Gibbons’s sound design and that enormous space where the audience surrounded the stage. But would the actual narrative of the play match that beginning?

Mariah Gale as Lady Shella Whent and the company in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones: The Mad King.