Winner, 2015 Olivier Award for Best New Play
Winner, 2015 London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play
Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule?
Mike Bartlett's controversial "future history play" explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain’s most famous family. Drawing on the style and structure of a Shakespearean history play,
King Charles III
opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, directed by its Artistic Director Rupert Goold, in 2014, before transferring to the West End. This brilliant, provocative play has shocked and thrilled audiences and critics alike, and will transfer to Broadway in Fall 2015.
"Dazzling... The most engrossing, entertaining and insightful new history play in decades." -
New York Times
"Outstanding and provocative... The most spectacular, gripping and wickedly entertaining piece of lèse-majesté that British theatre has ever seen." -
Telegraph
"Bold, brilliant and unstoppably entertaining... An intelligent, empathetic, moving look at the power and limitations of the modern monarchy... Theatre doesn't get much better than this." -
The Times
(London)
"Extraordinary... A meaty, hilarious, dizzyingly audacious state of the nation political thriller." -
Time Out London
Mike Barlett
is an Olivier Award-winning playwright whose plays have been seen at theatres including the National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, Bush Theatre and Sheffield Theatres in the UK, and off-Broadway in New York.