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will GAME OF THRONES work on stage?! | everything we know about the 2026 play at the RSC
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Micky Jo
Yes, you heard me correctly. Game of Thrones is coming to the stage with a full theatrical adaptation heading to the Royal Shakespeare Company this year. In a couple of months, in fact, years after it was first teased, the production is finally real and I'm about to bring you all of the industry insights I can about what we can expect, whether or not I imagine it will be successful, whether it is likely to transfer elsewhere beyond its regional world premiere. All the while, I would like you to know that what I'm really wondering is are there going to be dragons? So much for us to talk about as we break down this news. But first, an introduction. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening on podcast platforms if you are meeting me for the very first time. My name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a critic, a content creator and a pundit here on social media. And earlier today the theatre Internet was sent into a frenzy when it was announced that a new play based on the world of Game of Thrones by George R.R. martin was in fact coming to the Royal Shakespeare Company later this year, a fact which I had begun to predict in recent months. I even suspected that the announcement was going to be coming imminently. If you don't believe me, roll footage A Game of Thrones inspired stage show. I believe that we are going to be finding out a little bit more about that soon. I have a suspicion, yes, the thought had occurred to me a couple of months ago that the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon might be the perfect home for the Game of Thrones stage production if it were to ever see the light of day. After all, this was initially talked about a Good few years ago we found out at that time the creatives who were going to be working on the show, playwright and adapter Duncan McMillan and director Dominic Cook. And for a while Asset was getting talked about alongside the upcoming Hunger Games stage production, with which of course there are obvious similarities. Not just the idea of taking well known stories and intellectual property and putting them on stage in order to capitalize on their massive fan bases, but also the entire idea of how you show conflict and battle on stage. But as these were both getting talked about, neither of them seemed to be making significant Pacey progress towards an actual stage. Finally, the Hunger Games is open at the Troubadour Theatre, Canary Wharf, and we know where Game of Thrones is going. So today I will share with you all of the information that we currently know, everything that I can predict as somebody who has watched a lot of Game of Thrones in my lifetime, and I do feel that if you're familiar even with the first season, you've heard the title of this new play, then you can kind of gather what it's going to be about and when it's going to be set. But beyond that conversation, I'm sure you're curious about whether or not I think this is going to be successful. Because stage productions based on or expanding beyond worlds and works like this, with Stranger Things, the First Shadow being another currently still running on either side of the Atlantic, have enjoyed a certain amount of mixed success. They are often popular with their own pre built fan bases. But exactly how finite is that popularity today? I will let you know if I think Game of Thrones is a show worth seeing and a show worth staging. But before I do, I would love to know your opinions as well. Let me know all of your thoughts and feelings about Game of Thrones finally making its way to the British stage. And if there are any Song of Ice and Fire scholars watching, then feel free to help me out if I make any mistakes when talking about the lore of George R.R. martin's creations. In the meantime though, here is everything that we already know about Game of Thrones on stage. So there is already a show listing page on the RSC's website. That is what I am reading from here. And we already have a title for this play, George R.R. martin's Game of Thrones colon the Mad King. And it's being called a new play based on the novels by George R.R. martin, adapted by Duncan McMillan and directed by Dominic Cook. It's going to be in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which is the largest space at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon. For anyone outside of the uk, this is not in London. It's going to take you a couple of train journeys to get there if you plan to, but it's a lovely day out. Can recommend go to the rooftop restaurant, try the chicken and like I said, those of you already familiar with the world of Game of Thrones can probably understand immediately what story is being told based on the title the Mad King. But if you don't know, I can confirm that this is not an adaptation of a Game of Thrones story. We have already a scene. This is a prequel. This is going to depict events taking place in the immediate run up to the first televised series of Game of Thrones. An immediate prequel that's going to sort of set the stage for how everything began. Unlike, I believe, the two recent HBO spin off series, House of the Dragon and Knight of the Seven Realms, I think, which take place multiple generations and around a century before respectively, I think this is going to be much, much closer, which means it may contain some very familiar characters. More on that in just a moment. Here is the full description on the show listing page. Enter the world before Read Prologue A long winter thaws in Harrenhal and spring is promised at a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament. Lovers meet and revellers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, as there always are, amid growing unease at the bloodthirsty actions of the realm's merciless mad king, we know who that is. Dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot far away, the drums of battle sound immediately I'm going to talk a little bit more about why it makes sense. This is going to the rsc, but it sounds so inherently Shakespearean, doesn't it? It sounds like King Lear in a sense, but it also sounds like Richard II and Richard iii. This treasonous plot to overthrow a mad king on the eve of a jousting tournament. I mean, come on now. You also have all of these different factions, these different households, these allegiances, but these relationships that transcend those households carrying on family bonds, ancient prophecies and the sacred line of succession will be tested in a dangerous campaign for power. Who will survive? Who will rise? With a little quote here, wars aren't won by those with most cause, but whose stories best told Game of Thrones the Mad King, they go on to tell us is a sweeping new stage epic from the World of George R.R. martin, written by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cook, spanning the final years before the events of the novels interesting final years. That plot synopsis makes it sound like it's all one wild weekend. This powerful drama reveals a legendary chapter of Westerosi history come face to face with familiar characters There you go from the Houses Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Martell and witness the events that set the stage for the world's most critically acclaimed series. Join as an RSC supporter to access Priority booking from April playing in summer 2026. This is going to be exceedingly popular. If it's vitally important to you that you get there, then I might recommend joining as an RSC supporter. Due to expected high demand, tickets are limited to full 4 per person. Sucks to be you people with 3 kids. Also unclear at this point what the age recommendation is even going to be. Game of Thrones the series had its own fairly grisly and sexual moments. Priority booking for those interested is from 14th April 2026. Public booking to be announced in April and you can become an RSC member to hear about information first and to access priority booking. Tickets will be available via the website rsc.org.uk per the reporting of this news on playbill.com, we do also have a couple of statements, one here from Game of Thrones author George R.R. martin. He said, when I first wrote Game of Thrones, I never imagined that it would be anything other than a book. It was a place for my imagination to exist without limits. To my great surprise, it was adapted for a series and viewers have been able to enter the world of my imagination through the medium of television. For my work to now be adapted for the stage is something I did not expect, but welcome with great enthusiasm and excitement. Theatre offers something unique, a place for mine and the audience's imagination to meet and hopefully create something magical. They write that Martin will also serve as executive producer on the play. He continues, for me, the RSC was the obvious choice when thinking about putting a Game of Thrones story on the stage. Shakespeare is the greatest name in English literature and his plays have been a constant source of inspiration to me and my writing. Not only that, he faced similar challenges in how to put a battle on stage, so we are in good company. It will be thrilling to watch the events of this new play unfold in a live environment. Duncan's masterful script, Here We Go honours the world completely and I am so excited for both fans of the series and perhaps people who have never picked up one of my books to experience this new story in a theatre Meanwhile, Duncan macmillan and Dominic Cook said in a joint statement, this play is a prequel taking place over a decade before the events of Game of Thrones. Interesting. A long winter has started to thaw and for the first time in years, all the great houses come together for a tournament destined to be the greatest of the age. It feels like a new dawn, full of hope and opportunity, but tournaments always have a darker purpose. George's storytelling is Shakespearean in its scale and its themes. Dynastic struggle, ambition, rebellion, madness, prophecy, ill fated love. From the beginning, Shakespeare's histories and tragedies have been our primary reference for the ambition of this production, so the RSC feels like a natural home. It will be thrilling for us to share this new play with audiences, both those that know and love George's books and HBO's series, but also audiences who know nothing and want to come and experience something both beautifully intimate and truly epic. What they're trying to convey there in both of those statements is that you don't have to Game of Thrones in order to attend. If anyone's hearing this and thinking, oh, I better read all these vast books or watch this TV series, I dare say that they may nod to things that they are sort of the precursor to, but they seem eager to reassure audiences that you don't have to do any homework. And currently that is all of the information available here online. But I can expand on that a little bit for you and tell you about some of the creative
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- [11:56]
Micky Jo
It's involved. So Duncan McMillan is this brilliant playwright whose work I have thoroughly enjoyed on more than one occasion. His play Every Brilliant Thing is one of my favorite experiences I've ever had in a theater. You would be forgiven for experiencing that play because it's really more experienced than simply seen and finding it a little hard to understand how that particular playwright is going to tackle the world of Game of Thrones. Not only are they completely tonally incompatible, but just in terms of the structure, they seem as far apart as you could expect anything to be. Sometimes a playwright is announced for these sorts of projects and you kind of get it. Jack Thorne has worked on a lot of IP adaptations. Conor McPherson was the playwright for the Hunger Games. But I have tremendous faith in Duncan macmillan, and I think there are some clues in the rest of his writing as to how he might approach this, particularly the very incendiary play People, Places and Things, which does tackle some interesting questions around allegiance and deceit, albeit in a very different sense. He also recently delivered a new adaptation of the Seagull at the Barbican, which I thought was contemporary and fascinating. But Every Brilliant Thing remains my favorite work of his, and Broadway audiences will have a chance to see it in the coming weeks. It begins previews very shortly starring Daniel Radcliffe at the Hudson Theatre. It recently played at at Soho Place in London's West End as well. And he's had such a series of successes, he's currently existing in a realm where I'm excited about literally everything he does. So this is very intriguing to me. Meanwhile, the director Dominic Cook, who has worked on stage and on screen, he directed the television series the Hollow Crown and has overseen a great many plays as well as the occasional musical which think is going to be to his benefit here. Not because I anticipate this being a musical production. I don't think this is going to be Game of Thrones the Musical. I dare say it may contain music within it, but the scale of that kind of an operation, the size of that kind of a cast, I think it's very possibly going to have a lot in common with the scale of a musical theatre production. And considering what exactly this might be, I think invites a lot of interesting questions, like to what extent is the interior of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre going to be reconfigured? To what extent is this going to be a sort of somewhat immersive, atmospheric production? Those are two of the really big buzzwords at the moment. Of course, with this major project, you also have to assume that it's being built to have some kind of a future life and not solely exist for a limited run in Stratford Upon Avon. So, figuratively, anything that they are building, they also have to be able to pick up and put down somewhere else. And the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's stage layout is sort of this long thrust, which differs from many other more traditional proscenium theatres. Which isn't to say that they haven't transferred work from that venue. They have. But if a future life is already confirmed for Game of Thrones, which I think is very, very possible, I wonder if it's going to be staged in a way that feels more instantly compatible. Meanwhile, we've heard a lot about secret allegiances and relationships and the mad king of it all, per the title. Are we going to have any kind of animal activity on stage? I mean, puppeteered, not necessarily real. Are we going to see horses? We know that can be done in a handful of different ways. I've seen War Horse, I've seen A Knight's Tale. Are we going to have dragons? And per Game of Thrones lore, I believe we would be unlikely to see dragons because circa Game of Thrones, dragons haven't been seen for multiple generations. I think that's more the House of the Dragon kind of time period. I think because of when this is set, they may allude to, you know, imminent dragons, but no, no current dragons. No dragons at that precise moment, which is a shame, but also probably logistically reassuring. Horses, though, those I think we might be able to expect. They said a tournament. You can only do so much of a tournament without horses. I also think between tournament and banquet, we are bound to have some kind of musical identity to this piece as well. Many productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company do. Music is often an integral part of their storytelling. And it seems pretty certain that we are going to encounter many characters familiar from the TV series. I don't necessarily necessarily anticipate that they will be portrayed by the same actors from the TV series. That's not something you usually expect when something is adapted for the stage. I don't want to bring attention to a current film star reprising their screen role in a play based on a series of books on Broadway. But needless to say, if anyone from the Game of Thrones TV series did want to play the same character on stage, then, you know, tickets would go even more quickly. They would basically be printing money. Which brings us towards a conversation about this show's potential success. Success in comparison with other productions like the Hunger Games and Stranger Things.
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Micky Jo
Let's talk about it. Now. For various reasons, I think the likes of Stranger Things, the first Shadow, is going to be a better comparison here for the potential success of Game of Thrones on stage than Hunger Games. Because one of the inherent problems of Hunger Games is that it's adapting something we have already read on the page, we have already seen on screen, and it invites a certain amount of unfair comparison. Whereas with productions like Stranger Things, they choose to tell a new story, an inherently theatrical story, and they can set the goal posts where they wish to so they don't have to undertake challenges of adapting these huge sequences. They get to kind of draw their own map, as it were. More to the point, it also sets up the marketing team very well to say if you want to know everything that happened in this story, then you have to come and see this brand new chapter of it. With the Hunger Games, you can if you really want to choose to stay home and watch the DVD. I say that as if people are still watching DVDs, but with Stranger Things, the first shadow, especially in its earliest months, they were doing very good business on the basis that people were flying from around the world. Hardcore Stranger Things fans who had been told that this held the key to the then upcoming final series. And you know, I don't know that that turned out to be necessarily true, but at the beginning it certainly worked. And there's something about a news story and a news story moving in a backwards direction for fans who weren't particularly content necessarily with the way that the TV adaptation ended. That being said, there are certainly some lessons to be learned from the likes of Stranger Things, the First Shadow and the Hunger Games. Each of them seemed to, just at the final hurdle, run out of time as they were making their way to the stage. This was quite openly talked about with Stranger Things and why the Broadway production was able to be a little more developed. The Broadway production, which interestingly enough, has recently, I think been filmed on stage and will be released on Netflix, meaning that those fans who didn't fly around the world in order to go and see it will finally have the chance to find out what happened. But each of them also made the attempt to open cold in the commercial West End, one of them in an entirely new building. And so there's something perhaps smart, smarter and safer about Game of Thrones the Mad King opening at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I've heard commercial producers talk recently about the nurturing capacity of producing houses regionally because they have so many in house teams. At which point I do feel I need to acknowledge some of the restructuring and redundancy currently happening at the rsc. They are amidst an ongoing consultation, one aspect of which I believe is reducing or eliminating the in house musicians. Which isn't to say that there won't be musicians and there won't be music in Game of Thrones in this play, but that they will, I am assuming, just be hired for the production like actors would be. It is on the face of it, though, admittedly confusing for the RSC to be seemingly facing financial challenges while announcing huge projects such as this. And you know, you have to spend money to make money. It has also, I am assuming, become a part of that venue's ongoing financial strategy to have ongoing productions outside of the venue that they continue to earn royalties from. Until a few years ago, that was the case with the world's longest running musical, Les Miserables. Of course, when that production initially premiered at the Barbican was reworked by producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh. The Royal Shakespeare Company, I believe, were no longer entitled to lingering royals royalties. And we could even go back and look at the timeline of all of that and consider exactly how long this Game of Thrones play has been in development. We've been hearing who is working on it for the past couple of years, but it will have existed as an idea for many years before then, meaning it was more likely to have been inherited as a concept by the venue's new dual artistic directors, Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey. I say new they've been in post for a little while now, but I would go out on a limb and say that this play maybe got to the RSC before they did. Meanwhile, Les Mis was not the only source of royalties in the West End. There was also Matilda. There is also my neighbor Totoro. And while the recently opened Paddington the Musical does seem to be cornering the family market and perhaps intimidating its competition a little bit at the moment. They've seemed to be for the past 12 months or so doing exceedingly well not only with their in house productions, but also the international tours and West End productions and regional collaborations that they've been producing alongside. We've been seeing more RSC produced work in the last few than I think we'd seen in years, and the reason why I figured Game of Thrones was probably going to this venue was because it's not their first time staging something that feels adjacent to the world of Shakespeare and the world of kings and conquests. Specifically, I was thinking about their 2013 two part stage adaptation of the Hilary Mantel novels Wolf hall and Bring up the Bodies about Thomas Cromwell and I figured if those plays, which soon thereafter became a commercial venture in the West End and on Broadway way, could originate at the rsc, perhaps because of that nurturing development space, but also because of thematic vibes, then it would also make sense for Game of Thrones to do the same thing. And I think it's a great choice and I think inevitably it's going to to begin with, at least sell exceedingly well. I'm wildly excited about this as somebody who loves theater and was very interested in the Game of Thrones stories on screen. I also think even though I alluded to the possibility of the likes of like a Sean Beat been recreating their performance on stage, it doesn't really need it certainly at this time. Even with some criticism about the way in which those previous IP adaptations have been brought to the stage. They all began as very hot tickets when they were first announced and when they first went on sale. So it seems pretty obvious that this will have a subsequent West End life. The only question if you'll allow me to put the cart before the horse for just a moment. There's that horse again. Is which West End theatre it will head to too. And RSC productions have transferred to a handful of different places. The technical requirements will be interesting to note when hopefully I get to see it at the RSC later this year. As soon as we find out dates. I'm about to cancel all of my plans to make sure I'm available for this because it just became one of the most auspicious theatrical openings of the year. Worth noting that one of the listed producers is Len Blavatnik, who is also the owner of Theatre Royal Haymarket. Read into the that as you will. For now though, that I think is everything that we already know about this play on stage, as well as just about everything that I am willing to speculate about. But as soon as we hear further news or find out further information, I will be sure to let you know. Of course, later this year I do plan to be at the world premiere production at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon. I cannot wait. I have no idea what I'll wear, but I'm looking forward to finding out. And thereafter I will be be able to share my full Review here on YouTube. If you don't want to miss it, make sure you're subscribed or following me on podcast platforms where I will share it as well. In the meantime, I would love to hear what all of you think about Game of Thrones coming to the stage as a play at the rsc. Are you planning to get tickets or is this something that you're going to avoid? Are you a Game of Thrones fan to begin with? Could this convert you? Be sure to share all of your thoughts in the comments. And as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a staging day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe
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Micky Jo
Fraud.
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Micky Jo
Hey, good morning.
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Micky Jo
It's all right.
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Micky Jo
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