Set in Tudor England, against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s arrest, 1536 has become the runaway, must-see show of the year. Since its award-winning, sold-out run at the Almeida in 2025, the play—penned by breakout playwright and screenwriter Ava Pickett and directed by Lyndsey Turner—has picked up a new producer in Margot Robbie, been transferred to the West End, and will soon be adapted for the BBC.
Ahead of its opening at the Ambassadors Theatre, where it runs until August 1, Margot called Ava to discover just how—and why—a play about Anne Boleyn has become one of the biggest critical smash hits of recent times.
Margot Robbie: How are you, babe? Where are you?
Ava Pickett: I’m good, babe. I’m in Dublin. Where are you?
Well, I’m in LA. Coming to London very soon though for the opening night of 1536—not gonna miss that! Ava, for people reading this, if they have never even heard of 1536, can you give us a little rundown?
It’s a play about three young women living in Essex in Tudor England, set over the course of a summer against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s arrest and eventual execution. But it’s a play about lots of things. It’s a play that asks if female friendship can survive in a patriarchal society that’s violent against women. It’s about how what men do in the corridors of power—like when a king kills his queen—affects women everywhere. And also it’s about love and sex and friendship and dreams and all of that. And it’s very sweary.
It’s very, very timely. It doesn’t take a lot to connect the dots between what you’ve just described and what’s in the news every day. But this is also so entertaining. How did you balance that?
I think they help each other. I love stuff that is both really, really funny and really, really dark. It’s about allowing an audience to decide their own opinion. I feel like if you’re being told what to think, you just switch off. I know I would switch off if someone was hammering home a point to me for an hour and a half on stage.
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Photo: Helen Murray
For anyone reading this who is a writer, or has thought about writing, or wants to be a writer, tell us: what’s the process? Where do you write? What aspects of it feel difficult? Because it is a bit of an isolated craft, and then all of a sudden, it’s incredibly communal. That must be a really bizarre switch, and you need to have a personality that can cope with both.
