Chichester Festival theatre
Mike Poulton’s adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s novel shows how the sisters refuse to be passive victims
Wife Number 2 to serial husband, King Henry VIII, first to be beheaded and a marital trigger for the Reformation, Anne Boleyn is without doubt a star of the Tudor age, her life and death finely documented.
What is lesser known is the place of her sister, Mary – the other Boleyn of the title – in Henry’s court, and his heart. She was the king’s mistress before Anne became his wife. Plucked from the footnotes of history by novelist Philippa Gregory, on whose book this adaptation by Mike Poulton is based, this fictionalised story has twice been made into a film, with Peter Morgan’s star-studded version offering a soft-focus portrait of the sisters.
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