Review: A Man For All Seasons, Oxford Playhouse

Fans of Wolf Hall, whether on page or screen, will remember that Hilary Mantel’s portrait of Thomas Cromwell is a deeply sympathetic one while she depicts Thomas More as a ruthless hunter of heretics. But go back more than 60 years to another Tudor blockbuster, Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons, and we see a mirror image.

In Bolt’s version, More is virtually a saint – although he was not actually canonised until 1935 – while Cromwell is the undisputed villain of the piece. It’s a reminder of the personal, subjective nature of historical dramas.

Martin Shaw returns to the stage as More in a touring production of the play at Oxford’s Playhouse and under the direction of Jonathan Church. If Shaw inhabits the role comfortably, that’s probably because he’s played More before. He begins quietly but by the end, and facing his own end, he is thunderous in his anger at injustice and the expedient ways of the world.

Most people are probably familiar with this thoroughly ploughed stretch of English history but the programme notes helpfully remind us of Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn, and the way in which the English church and state, essentially the same thing, contorted itself to satisfy the King’s requirements.

Everyone caved in to Henry’s demands, eventually. Everyone except Thomas More, who could not reconcile his conscience and his religion with the legal quibbling and public declarations necessary to sanctify a new marriage.

There is only one scene between More and Henry (an expansive Orlando James) but it’s a very important one. The King admires More above all for his integrity and so is desperate to have the other's approval. But, of course, it’s that very integrity which prevents More giving it.

Throughout the play the audience should be divided, half applauding More’s intransigence, half wanting him to give in to what seem like very natural, reasonable requests to conform, especially from his wife and daughter. There are more sinister pressures too, embodied in the volley-like scenes of interrogation which take up much of the second half and which give a sharper edge to the action. More, a lawyer by training, intends to shelter behind the law and there is a poignant irony in his expressions of faith in “justice”.

A large cast rises to the challenge of Bolt’s muscular dialogue, which mixes some of More’s own words and contemporary language but without ever sounding strained. The set (Simon Higlett) moves from the comfort of More’s Thames-side mansion to the bareness of his cell in the Tower. And linking it all is the ingratiating presence of the Common Man, as played by Gary Wilmot. He’s the mortar gluing together the grander elements in the edifice.

With a change of cap or jerkin, Wilmot shifts seamlessly from household steward to river boatman to gaoler to executioner. He stands for the audience as he reminds us in the final line of this worthwhile revival: “Goodnight. If we should bump into one another, recognise me.”

A Man For All Seasons runs at the Oxford Playhouse until Saturday, February 22.

Philip Gooden