Georgina Brown reviews the opening night of "Game of Thrones: The Mad King" at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, a stage prequel to the hit fantasy series that took a decade to develop and sold out immediately upon announcement. Written by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke, the production centres on the Tournament of Harrenhal, bringing together Westeros's nobility for a story of power struggles, romance and betrayal, and the review awards it four out of five stars, praising its pace, spectacle and echoes of Shakespearean tragedy.

The nearly four-hour production (three hours 45 minutes) features a strong cast including Michael Shaeffer as the paranoid, cruel King Aerys, Callum Woodhouse as Robert Baratheon and Maxim Ays as Jaime Lannister, alongside mechanical jousting horses operated by puppeteers. Brown notes the first half resembles a sweeping medieval tapestry, while the drama intensifies after the interval, with the review highlighting a particularly moving scene involving pregnant noblewomen watching from balconies.