7 Years Later, Game of Thrones Finally Redeems Its Biggest Failure With a Near-Perfect Prequel

Enter Game of Thrones: The Mad King, a stage play directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Duncan Macmillan. Beyond its characters, The Mad King is one of the most visually stunning pieces of theater I’ve seen in a long time. Image: HBOIt’s hard to point to anything particularly uninspiring about The Mad King that stems from its own flaws. Try as The Mad King might, it’s far more enjoyable if you divorce the stage play adaptation from HBO’s Game of Thrones entirely. Game of Thrones: The Mad King is now performing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.