IT is more than 60 years since Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons became a hit in London, on Broadway and as a film that garnered many awards and made an international star of Paul Scofield – who also played the protagonist, Sir Thomas More, on stage.
Now, in 2025, the glittering, paranoid, dangerous court of Henry VIII is a staple of screen drama, and thanks to Hilary Mantel and countless other novelists, historians and film-makers, we think we know the despotic much-married Henry and his two famous Thomases – More and Cromwell. We see two men, one a brilliant idealist, the other a brilliant pragmatist, we see their rise, the way their paths intersect … and their very different falls, which ended at the same bloody spot, on the executioner’s block.
Bolt’s play takes us back to Henry’s middle period, when he was no longer the glamorous young king, although still charismatic and energetic, but a man obsessed with his succession – and with a beautiful young woman, Anne Boleyn. One Thomas cannot betray his faith and his conscience to make the necessary compromise to support the king’s wish to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. The other Thomas has the skill and the power to make it happen.
The play puts some of the biggest issues of the post-medieval period squarely centre stage. The rise of a new religion, the huge upheaval of the Reformation, the God-given power of the papacy, the battle in England between Church and state, in the person of the king (Orlando James). For Thomas Cromwell (played in this new production by Edward Bennett), the issue is clear. For Thomas More (Martin Shaw), it is a challenge of profound ethical consequence.
What is the difference between loyalty to yourself and your own conscience and the loyalty you owe the king? What does an oath, sworn on the Bible, actually ask of you? What will you do – or refuse to do – to be true to yourself, to the inner voice of your conscience and to your faith?
Surrounding these two giants of the Tudor period are the Duke of Norfolk, a friend of Thomas More (Timothy Watson), the two, three, maybe four-faced Richard Rich (seen most recently betraying Cromwell in the last part of the Wolf Hall trilogy and here played by Calum Finlay), and Sir Thomas More’s household, including his fiercely loyal and practical wife Alice (Abigail Cruttenden), his clever, highly educated and utterly devoted daughter Meg (Annie Kingsnorth), Meg’s suitor, later husband, William Roper (Sam Phillips) and his steward, the Common Man.
The Common Man is the embodiment of the ordinary person who is just trying to survive. This critical part – the Common Man is also a boatman, the chairman of the jury at More’s trial, the gaoler, the executioner – is played by Gary Wilmot, showing his versatility and a long way from his more familiar comedy or musical roles.
Director Jonathan Church has chosen a straightforward approach to this great play. You could say he has taken an old-fashioned route to presenting characters that are real historic figures, larger than life by their significance in the story of England, but also irredeemably human. There are no clever tricks, no fancy sets that digitally morph from Tudor house to garden to royal palace to the Tower of London – Simon Higlett’s set, like his costumes, speaks of Tudor England, in all its opulence and cruelty, gilded wealth and grinding poverty.
This clear, intelligent approach lets the play and the actors speak for themselves. Bolt used many words and phrases from the documents and court papers of the time – most of the action and the characters are real people. And it is the sheer quality of the acting that is the triumph of this production, most significantly from Martin Shaw’s dignified, sincere, humane, often witty and utterly honest More and Edward Bennett’s formidable, calculating, ruthless Cromwell. But throughout the performance, there isn’t a weak link or a moment that doesn’t feel credible and necessary.
This new co-production between the Theatre Royal and Jonathan Church Theatre Productions is at Bath until Saturday 25th January, then touring to Chichester Festival Theatre, Malvern Festival Theatre, Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre and London’s Richmond Theatre.
Photographs by Simon Annand