Royal Shakespeare Theatre, written by George RR Martin and Duncan MacMillan, directed by Dominic Cooke. I saw the performance on 4th August 2026.

Sticking to the spirit of the secrecy the RSC is keen to preserve, I’m going to avoid spoilers for this review.

The play takes place over two acts. The first covers the famous tourney at Harrenhal and is the superior half. It seemed to me to capture the essence of great Thrones – whispered conversations in dark corners; monarchy a theatre for the realm, and the monarch’s health a proxy for the  health of the body politic.

The performances here are excellent, particularly Michael Shaeffer as Aerys. Madness can be difficult to portray convincingly. Here I felt it’s picked just right – manifesting as a certain absence of logic, inconstant moods and murderous paranoia. A key scene between Rhaegar and Aerys is standout: filial duty, fatherly concern mixed with an undercurrent of Targaryen mysticism.

This seemed to me to perfectly encapsulate the strengths of this first act: the mysticism is compelling. The Song of Ice and Fire, Aegon’s dream from House of the Dragon, plays strong in both Aerys and Rhaegar’s imaginations. Both heed the prophecy that “the dragon has three heads” and long for a third child to fulfil destiny. But more than that, Rhaegar’s sense of the coming cold and dark is pitched as the source of his melancholy; his growing romance with Lyanna the promise of ice and fire together.

There is a bitter irony in Lyanna’s rejection of a life locked away bearing children for some lord. Like Areia, her cold Stark blood burns. I enjoyed the agency she has in actively rejecting Robert Baratheon’s boorish alpha male approaches, and preferring Rhaegar’s cultured connection. This human drama, alongside Rhaegar and Elia’s game of thrones with Aerys, make the first act compulsive. It’s helped by some great, striking set design, and magical puppetry of knights on horseback and dragon dreams.

The second act can’t quite live up to the first. It has to tell a less contained story – Robert’s rebellion – across multiple locations and introducing numerous new characters that fans will recognise but who tend to clutter the dramatic threesomes that propelled the first act.

The best addition is Queen Rhaella: a mad queen to rival Aerys. Her tale of the tragedy of Summerhall, and the dragon’s curse she promises to exact on Westeros in the name of the women subjected to male lust, retrospectively adds colour to a major, fumbled plot in TV’s Game of Thrones – it elicited some gasps from the audience.

I also very much enjoyed Elizabeth Ayodele as Princess Elia Martell. Her back channel communication with Lyanna is a significant addition to the lore (somewhat similar to the Rhaenyra/Alicent additions in House of the Dragon). I think the second act would have been strengthened by leaning more into the women as powers behind the warring princes, and less into Ned’s adventures with Rob. 

I understand the Starks are fan favourites – but by the time the Lannister clan and Cat Tully turn up I felt this was diluting the time I wanted to spend with the characters established in Act I.  By the end of the play, we’re seeing dramatisations of events told and retold in Game of Thrones and while fan pleasing (I am a fan and I was pleased) the real story ends with the two prophesied births.

Where Act II does win out is in some of the staging, which includes some even more spectacular puppetry than the first half, plus an Iron Throne that is more book accurate and impressive than on TV. 

Without spoilers there were two significant moments from the lore that I was looking out for. One: the identity of the Laughing Knight, which is definitively revealed. The other, a name which was spoken on TV but which does not appear here – suggesting, as many believe, it was a showrunner invention.  

This is a premium production: it looks gorgeous; it is staged wonderfully. I would defy anyone not to enjoy the spectacle of it. My slight reservations in no way detract from the towering joy of the play. A very strong recommend.