Mark Goldthorp and Emily Lane in Anne Boleyn: The Musical at Hever Castle, Kent.  Picture: Daniel Watson Photography

Anne Boleyn; The Musical continues at Hever Castle, Kent until 30 August 2025.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

This site-specific show can’t be faulted for location, setting and grandiloquence of scale. Anne Boleyn grew up at Hever, where Henry VIII wooed her and that connection certainly adds salt to the mix.

The playing space – open backed with an expanse of grass behind it – is vast which means plenty of marching on and off for a huge cast. In the distance, Hever Castle glints glamorously under its blue floodlights. It looks almost too good to be true.

Initially, as we find our seats, we’re subjected to a peculiar ‘classical’ compilation of recorded music. If you’re trying to re-create the early 1500s, famous pieces composed in the 19th and 20th centuries do not cut the mustard.

Eventually we see Anne Boleyn (Emily Lane – very good) walking purposefully across the grassy sward towards the purpose-built auditorium which is a nice touch – as it is later to see Henry (Mark Goldthorp – oodles of kingly charisma) arriving on horseback and, later still, the young future Elizabeth I on a pony.

The story of Anne Boleyn is one of the best-known pieces of English history ….

Read the rest of this review at  Musical Theatre Review https://musicaltheatrereview.com/anne-boleyn-the-musical-hever-castle/