About the Author

Mike Barlett is an award-winning playwright whose plays include: Scandaltown (Lyric Hammersmith, 2022); The 47th (Old Vic, London, 2022); Mrs Delgado (Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2021); Vassa, adapted from Maxim Gorky's play Vassa Zheleznova (Almeida Theatre, London, 2019); Snowflake (Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2018; revived at Kiln Theatre, London, 2019); Albion (Almeida Theatre, 2017); Wild (Hampstead Theatre, 2016); Game (Almeida Theatre, 2015); King Charles III (Almeida/West End/Broadway, 2014-15); An Intervention (Paines Plough/Watford Palace Theatre); Bull (Sheffield Theatres/Off-Broadway); Medea (Glasgow Citizens/Headlong); Chariots of Fire (based on the film; Hampstead/West End); 13 (National Theatre); Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough/Plymouth Drum/Royal Court); Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre); Cock (Royal Court/Off-Broadway); Artefacts (Nabokov/Bush); Contractions and My Child (Royal Court).

He was Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre in 2011, and the Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007. Cock won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2010. Love, Love, Love won the TMA Best New Play Award in 2011. Bull won the same award in 2013. King Charles III won the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play in 2015.

He has written several plays for BBC Radio, winning the Writers' Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking. 

His work for television includes Press (BBC One, 2018); Trauma (ITV, 2018); two series of Doctor Foster (BBC One, 2015 & 2017, Best New Drama at the National Television Awards); and The Town (ITV1, 2012).

Reviews

'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*

'Extraordinary… a meaty, hilarious, dizzyingly audacious state of the nation political thriller'
*Time Out*

'Royally entertaining… raises fascinating questions about the future of the monarchy'
*Guardian*

'Scintillating and highly ambitious... a brilliant, provocative piece of drama'
*Financial Times*

'Wonderfully original... Bartlett's brilliant text pulses with Shakespearean resonances... a right royal triumph'
*The Stage*

'Pitch-perfect… bracingly provocative and outrageously entertaining'
*Independent*

'Brilliantly ambitious… deliciously smart… [the] script is a witty amalgam of Shakespearean rhythms and sharp modern colloquialisms'
*Exeunt Magazine*