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veryone knows the story of Hamlet. But few know the inspiration. Shakespeare had three children with his wife Anne Hathaway. The eldest, a girl named Susanna. The later two, twins, named Judith and Hamnet. In the summer of 1596, Hamnet died tragically at the age of eleven. In a fever of grief, four years later, Shakespeare bore the words of Hamlet. He flipped the script and told the story of a son haunted by the death of his father, all the while he was the father haunted by the death of his son. Maggie O’Farrell fills in the blanks of that real story with her award-winning novel Hamnet.

Now that story can be lived through thanks to the adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti, the woman who most recently wrote the stage script for Life of Pi. It’s being transferred to the West End after just four months in Stratford: Hamnet is a hit before opening night.

A story told over a period of 20 years, the show has all the staples of a play written by the bard himself. There’s mystery and magic, a forbidden love story, and a tragedy all too heavy to bear. But don’t let the title fool you. Hamnet is its name, and Shakespeare walks the stage, but the spotlight falls on his wife, Agnes Hathaway. (A name change taken by creative liberties of O’Farrell)

The woman at the edge of the forest, Agnes has the ability to look at a person and see right through to their soul. She is played by Madeleine Mantock, a woman not unfamiliar with magical roles – most recently, a witch in the Charmed reboot. We sat down with the star of the show to discuss how she went from competitive disco dancing to taking centre stage in the theatrical event of the year.

What made you want to perform?
Where I grew up there was no theatre. Then a man called Jordi Guitart came to my dance school to do a dance masterclass. He had all this knowledge and all this essence; I wanted to be like him. I remember being told, “You don’t really get to do it. It’s too difficult, it’s too competitive.” I was like, “Well, I will. Even if it was 10% or 5%, I will be part of the 5%.” I’ve kept that obnoxious drive since.

What happens next after this discovery? Do you find theatre or keep dancing?
It was still only dancing at that point. I used to be a competitive freestyle disco dancer, which is quite niche. It’s like if you brought Strictly Ballroom into this century. You are spray tanned within an inch of your life. Your hair is scraped onto your head, and you curl it so you have this poof there. You’re wearing Swarovski crystals, crazy cat-eye makeup. You almost look like a peacock. You have this insane neon costume, which is bejewelled.

You go to a regional leisure centre, and there are different judges placed around the room in a rectangle. There will be 20 of you in a heat, which is like a round, and you strut onto the floor and they play any random music and you just dance to it in a square.

That’s one heat. If you make it past that round, you do it again. By the final, you come on from the side doing tricks and flips and you dance forwards in a line. It’s a whole day, it’s a massive, massive industry. It’s very niche but the BBC made a documentary about it.

How do you make your way to ArtsEd?
It wasn’t easy. But I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. When I was trying to get to school, I had to find a way to pay for it. When I was 18, school bills were ten and a half grand. At the time, regular university was three grand for a year. For a specialist course, that’s the difference you needed to pay.

I was writing to people, I made my own kind of pamphlet. I ended up having seven or eight people who had given money to help me get onto my course. I used to write them update letters about what I was getting up to at school, and what we were doing.

My school had quite a lot of opportunities to go and be a chorus for big events. We performed at the BBC Proms, we did a Sondheim birthday celebration. I used to tell the people helping me, “I’m really doing this. This is what your help is doing.”

Who were the people that ended up helping?
One of them was a local councillor, Rod Kempster. I had written to him and asked for help. He was the person who said yes and signed the cheque. You have to build a personal connection with someone. You have to convince them that you can do this.

When I went to ArtsEd, and I saw the other students, I knew it was where I was meant to go. But I didn’t get in. You’re not allowed to re-apply in the same year; you’re supposed to wait a year. But because I was so on it, I had auditioned first day of that cycle. So I wrote to them and said, ‘Please, can I try again?’

You’re a lady of letters…
Yes! They weren’t sure my singing was strong enough. But I said to them, ‘If you’re supposed to be the best school for musical theatre then you should be able to teach me.’ And then the head of music Dane Preece let me in! I was really tenacious. I really thought I was supposed to go there.
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