Theatre review: Game of Thrones: The Mad King

In the latest attempt to plug the Les Mis-shaped hole in their budget the RSC have taken a break from Celebrity Antisemite Roal Dahl and moved on to Celebrity Pirate George Arrr! Arrr! Martin, and his A Song of Ice and Fire saga. And Stratford-upon-Avon seems an apt enough home for a story conceived as a fantasy version of the Wars of the Roses since Shakespeare wrote eight* plays about them. And with roughly the same amount of concern for historical accuracy. Game of Thrones Colon The Mad King is the most immediate prequel to the original novels and Game of Thrones TV series yet, and fleshes out events known from the stories but not previously told in this much detail. And there's... certainly no shortage of detail in a play with a cast bigger than some West End musicals and a running time that just scrapes in under the four-hour mark.So the titular mad king is Aerys II Targaryen (Michael Shaeffer,) ruling Westeros after centuries of his family sitting the Iron Throne, kept there by…