Ben
Brantley

January 22, 2014

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England — Thomas Cromwell, the guileful right hand to King Henry VIII, was said to be fluent in many tongues and adept at double talk in all of them. But I imagine even he would be impressed by the act of translation that is taking place in his name at the Swan Theater here. Hilary Mantel’s best-selling shadow-steeped and highly nuanced novels about Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, have been reincarnated by the Royal Shakespeare Company into a bright, bustling political soap opera that condenses more than a thousand pages of fiction into two plays and a brisk six hours of stage time. You might say that Ms. Mantel’s books, which seem to take place within a shroud of fog and darkness, have been brought into the open daylight.