GB News discusses trigger warnings
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A forthcoming musical chronicling the life of Anne Boleyn is issuing content warnings about themes that most British schoolchildren could recite from memory.
The production, Anne Boleyn: The Musical, will be staged at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, south-east London, and has cautioned prospective audiences about “execution by beheading,” “female oppression” and “false accusations.”
The fate of Henry VIII’s second wife, famously summarised in the playground rhyme “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”, ranks among the most widely known episodes in English history.
The production’s online booking page advises parental discretion for children under 12 and lists several themes that audiences may find distressing.
The full warning reads: “This open-air production features historical themes, including depictions of female oppression, false accusations, emotional distress and perinatal loss/miscarriage, culminating in Anne’s imprisonment and execution by beheading.”
Boleyn was imprisoned in the Tower of London before being put to death in 1536, a sequence of events that has been taught in schools, dramatised on screen and embedded in popular culture for centuries.
The producers nonetheless appear concerned that theatregoers might arrive unaware of how the story ends.
The show is directed by Roxana Silbert and will feature live horses alongside a score composed by Selma Greenwood, with lyrics co-written by Rebecca Night and Sam Kenyon.
In an unusual twist, every member of the audience will be required to wear headphones throughout the performance.
It will be staged in a purpose-built covered auditorium on the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, notably the very site where the Palace of Placentia, Boleyn’s former residence, once stood.
Tickets for performances running in May and June 2027 are priced between £25 and £121, with the show billing itself as “an evening that rewrites theatre.”
The show’s promotional material describes Boleyn as “brilliant, ambitious and ahead of her time,” portraying her as a woman who defied the expectations placed upon women in Tudor England to forge her own path.
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The musical promises to trace her life from her early years through to her ascent to the throne, presenting what its creators call a “groundbreaking” retelling delivered “on an epic scale, revealing the woman behind the crown.”
Earlier this year, a National Geographic documentary disclosed that Boleyn maintained her innocence of both treason and adultery charges until the very moment of her execution.
GB News has approached the Old Royal Naval College for comment.
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