Jane Seymour and Mary Tudor (Melissa Allan) are virtuous triangles, while Rosanna Adams’ refreshing Anna of Cleves is a resolute, and perfect, square. The costumes enact a commentary of their own on the vagaries of the body politic: Nicholas Boulton’s wayward Duke of Suffolk sports ruched breeches, in pointed contrast with the mothy velvet of Nick Woodeson’s pompous Duke of Norfolk. The beaky masks of all the aristocratic revellers mirror an earlier shadow play of the scythes and swords of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the popular uprising that was the start of Cromwell’s fall from grace. Christopher Oram’s monumental concrete set, which at first seemed a blockade against the very porousness that is the key to Cromwell’s genius, is criss-crossed with light as the court dissolves into a ghastly masquerade. After the death in childbirth of Jane Seymour, the pace quickens, the tone darkens and the production belatedly finds its mojo.
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