A Man for all Seasons: Martin Shaw should be playing Lear – not Thomas More
Sir Thomas More – saint or sinner? Well, the Catholic Church canonised him in 1935 as a martyr, and he was made patron saint of statesmen and politicians by the Pope at the turn of this century.
In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel conversely characterised him, to quote one appalled critic, as “a charmless prig, a humourless alienating nasty piece of work”; here was an arch schemer, torturer of heretics and the opposite of Mantel’s calculating but principled Cromwell.
In renewing popular interest in the Tudors, Mantel’s works may well have bolstered the market for a revival of Robert Bolt’s dusty 1960 drama about Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor and his fateful stand-off with the king over the latter’s bid to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon and break with Rome. Serious-minded audiences are likely to flock.
It would be ideal if Bolt’s lofty play took a well-rounded and debate-stirring view of the man. His informed study of More in the years prior to his 1535 execution, however, is respectful, even reverential. The title “A Man for All Seasons” might imply a man who shifted with the prevailing winds but it in fact denotes an oak-like resistance to the flux. This makes for a solid enough evening and argues the time-honoured case for integrity over expediency, with a topical frisson perhaps about religious fervour over secular adherence. But while the play has outlasted some of the modish work that surfaced after the 1956 “kitchen sink” revolution, it doesn’t seem for all ages.
Jonathan Church’s revival itself resurrects a central performance from Martin Shaw, who ably trod the boards as More in the West End in 2006 (Charlton Heston notably starred in a London production in 1987 while the matchless Paul Scofield played the part, to Oscar-winning effect, on screen in 1966). Commercially, given Shaw’s TV profile (from The Professionals and on), it’s a canny move. Artistically, the dividends are more mixed.
Bolt was picturing More middle-aged; Shaw has just turned 80 (now well ripe for Shakespeare’s Lear, and proves he might excel at it here). His snowy-white hair lends gravitas to his rumpled air of hangdog sagacity and there’s pleasure to be had in his wry, wintry looks, quiet smiles and saintly stillness. But if the “less is More” self-containment attests to the hero’s desire to keep his own counsel, despite court pressures, Shaw’s visible age also compounds a general sense of imbalance.
Beside him, Edward Bennett’s Cromwell seems narrowly petulant, Orlando James’s Henry VIII is a too briefly seen swaggerer in boots, and the female household a side-show (Abigail Cruttenden a generation apart as his supportive yet plaintive wife). The second half bears some of the finest writing (More’s own wit a cue): “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales!” he jibes at Calum Finlay’s grasping Richard Rich. Gary Wilmot deploys a welcome levity as the choric figure of ‘the Common Man’. But elegant and imposing period trappings aside, complete with a fake-flaming fireplace, the overall impression is of an asymmetric drama, conducted at too low a heat.
Until Sat. Tickets: theatreroyal.org.uk ; tours to Mar 15