Game of Thrones prequel play reveals full cast list

Michael Abubakar will play Ned Stark in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Game of Thrones prequel

For those interested in seeing Westeros on the stage, The Royal Shakespeare Company revealed the full cast for the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel play, The Mad King. Michael Abubakar will take the reins from Sean Bean to portray Ned Stark. Abubakar has an extensive theater background, having played Romeo in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Romeo & Juliet, Jimmy in Almeida Theatre's Roots, and more.

As for the full cast list, Michael Shaffer plays King Aerys II Targaryen, with Noah Ritter as Prince Rhaegar, Harmony Rose-Bremner as Lyanna Stark, Maxim Ays as Jaime Lannister, Callum Woodhouse as Robert Baratheon, and Elizabeth Ayodele as Elia Martell. The play was written by Duncan Macmillan (Lungs, Every Brilliant Thing, Nineteen Eighty-Four) and is being directed by Dominic Cooke (The Comedy of Errors, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom).

Game of Thrones: The Mad King is a new play that will debut at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in London from July 20 to Sept. 5. Its first week is already sold out, but there are still tickets left for later shows. Set ten years before the beginning of Game of Thrones, it will depict the Tourney at Harrenhal, the jousting competition that essentially kicked off Robert Baratheon's rebellion against the "Mad King" Aerys II Targaryen. Basically, this tournament was where Prince Rhaegar Targaryen first met Lyanna, whom he would later abduct, setting in motion a Helen of Troy-style chain of events that led to war.

RSC's website summarizes the play’s premise as follows:

“Enter the world before. A long winter thaws in Harrenhal, and spring is promised. At a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament, lovers meet and revellers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, amid growing unease at the bloodthirsty actions of the realm’s merciless Mad King, dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot. Far away, the drums of battle sound.

Family bonds, ancient prophecies, and the sacred line of succession will be tested in a dangerous campaign for power. Who will survive? Who will rise?"

While Game of Thrones’ infamous finale soured many fans on the series, that hasn't stopped Warner Bros. and HBO from delivering plenty of follow-up projects, including House of the Dragon, which recently revealed a new season 3 trailer, and last year's excellent A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

As for George R. R. Martin, the production will inevitably spark another wave of desperate diehards bothering him about why he's working on another spin-off project instead of his long-awaited novel, The Winds of Winter. His last update on the subject came earlier this year when he revealed he had over 1,000 pages of the book done. One thing is for sure: audiences will almost certainly see The Mad King long before that much-delayed novel.