DH and I watched Wolf Hall on Broadway Friday night, the first time Royal Shakespeare Company was performing it in NYC. It is a fantastic production! So talented and alive... so well done. If you are familiar with books by Hillary Mantel you will enjoy it. My friends in Britain tell me the BBC mini-series that is coming to Masterpiece on PBS in April is also excellent. In book form, theater or TV, don't miss Wolf Hall - it gives nice insights into family entanglements, Tudor-style.

Here is BM vs SM vs SD dynamic set in 1530s. Some highlights include:

Catherine of Aragon has been married to Henry for 20 years when the play opens. She has not given him a son - something Anne Boleyn has already promised to do. Taking her word for it, Henry sends his consigliere and fixer, Thomas Cromwell, to Catherine ( BM) to convince her to join a convent so that Henry could now marry Anne (SM). Catherine, splendidly indignant with her Spanish accent, asks,

- So Henry wants me to become a nun? Tell him I will do so. I have only one condition though:
THAT HENRY BECOME A MONK!!!

You have to admire her spirit! Isn't that the expectation of all jilted or jilting women everywhere??? When i am done with him, what else is there left for him to do?

Far from becoming a monk Henry goes on to marry Anne of Thousand Days. Once she gives birth to "a ginger baby" - the future Queen Elizabeth - who, shockingly, is NOT a boy, she unleashes her fury at Catherine and Mary (her SD) demanding that from now on Mary address her daughter as Princess while being relegated to the status of an illegitimate child ( her parents marriage has been annulled). Once she gives birth, Anne becomes your typical evil SM... Poor Mary will have 4 other SMs ( not part of the play) some of whom will be younger than her, and some barely older but friendly. Same goes for Elizabeth - with that many step-mothers she could be the best known step-daughter in history.

I have never thought of it that way: Elizabeth I inherited her father's throne ( after her two siblings were done with it) despite - I would imagine - her many SMs' wishes. But then again, not all of them lived long enough to have an opinion:

divorced, beheaded, died,
divorced, beheaded, survived - goes the sequence of Henry's wives.

Too bad the days divorced BMs were sent to the Tower of London after falling from grace are gone.
That was my takeaway from this very entertaining show.