'Big' Ben Miles v 'Slow' Mark Rylance: Wolf Hall's Cromwell on stage and screen 

History repeating … Ben Miles, left, and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in the RSC and BBC adaptations of Wolf Hall. Photograph: Tristram Kenton; BBC

egular theatregoers accumulate comparisons between actors in classical roles: the Hamlets, say, of Jonathan Pryce, Anton Lesser and Mark Rylance. It’s much more unusual, though, to be given the chance to contrast performances in a new piece of writing. But those who get their entertainment from the RSC and BBC2 can cast judgment on Jonathan Pryce and Paul Jesson as Cardinal Wolsey, the Sir Thomas Mores of Anton Lesser and John Ramm, and the way in which Mark Rylance and Ben Miles approach the part of Thomas Cromwell.

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While the cast of Jeremy Herrin’s RSC productions of Mike Poulton’s adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are preparing to open on Broadway (where the shows will be called Wolf Hall Parts 1 and 2, because the first named play attracted bigger ticket sales in London), the BBC2 dramatisation, adapted by Peter Straughan and directed by Peter Kosminsky, reaches the halfway point of its six-week run tonight.

Anyone who has seen both the stage and screen versions is offered an unusual opportunity to compare what are known in the rehearsal room as “acting choices”. Some of the portrayals are broadly similar. Although Ramm (RSC) and Lesser (BBC2) are physically distinct presences – the former broad and heavy; the latter slight and light – their Thomas Mores are both dark, sneaky schemers, because that is Mantel’s revisionist interpretation of the man who had previously been dramatically immortalised as a saint by Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons.

The Katherines of Aragon of Lucy Briers (stage) and Joanne Whalley (screen) also have a sisterly similarity, because this is the character whom Mantel most precisely describes, down to her lisping, Spanish pronunciation of Cromwell’s name. And if the filmed Henry VIII of Damien Lewis and the live one of Nathaniel Parker both involve terrifying switches between cruelty and sensuality, calculation and piety, then that is because they are playing the most familiar character in the piece, and so are being measured against a historical template.

Ben Miles (Thomas Cromwell) and Nathaniel Parker (Henry Vlll) in Bring Up the Bodies at the Aldwych theatre in 214. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Most starkly differentiated are the interpretations of Mantel’s protagonist. Miles’s stage Cromwell is quick of wit, speech and feet, entering and leaving scenes with coiled urgency. On television, Rylance takes the opposite approach: coming into a room slowly then stopping dead, pausing before speaking and often halting again mid-sentence or speech. What you remember of Miles is his astonishing energy; with Rylance it is the remarkable stillness. In both cases, it is credible that they are capable of murder – a key character point – but, in Shakespearean terms, Miles is Iago and Rylance Hamlet.

Apart from the choices made by two actors with very different styles, the vast contrast between the approaches of Miles and Rylance also results from the requirements of the form. Stage acting is about injecting energy into every scene and every moment: even stillness and silence must somehow be sprung. That is why actors are often visibly exhausted or breathless by curtain call. The stage actor knows from the coughs or fidgeting whether an audience is becoming bored, and is aware, when restarting after the interval, of the potential sedative effects of the half-time gin and tonics. It is part of their craft to control and cajole the audience into attention and interest. Miles, in the theatical Mantels, gave a masterclass in the duty of a leading actor to be the carburettor of a show, regulating the flow and energy.

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A TV audience may well be bored or drunk – or could even, which is rare in theatre, be having sex during the show – but the performers are not required to take any account of these possibilities. Although it is unwise for the makers of TV drama completely to ignore pace and rhythm, it is inherently a more reflective medium than theatre.

There is a strong echo in Rylance’s Cromwell of the most influential TV performance in the medium’s history: Alec Guinness’s George Smiley in the John le Carré adaptations Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People. Guinness, who came to television late after conquering stage and cinema, seemed intuitively to realise that the leisurely pace of a long-form serial allows the actor the possibility of sometimes saying and doing nothing at all and yet seducing the viewer through this impassivity.

So there is a trade-off between characterisation and medium. Miles maximised the wit and charm and vigour in Cromwell because they plausibly explain how a butcher’s son could have made such an impact at court – but it was also the sort of performance most likely to prevent a theatre audience slumping in their seats. Miles’s Cromwell would have been too big and fast for TV, Rylance’s too small and slow for stage (although, if the casting of the projects had been reversed, it is likely that each actor would have ended up with something close to the other’s version).

The cast of what is now Wolf Hall Parts 1 and 2 must be relieved to be away in New York while the BBC version is airing, and, even if they weren’t, would surely not watch the alternative interpretations of their characters until after their run is done, for risk of influence or envy. Drama and media studies courses, however, would find rich possibilities in a comparison between the two versions, which demonstrate that theatre and television acting are as different in their demands and rewards as are test match and one-day cricket.

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