Dragon Review: A Man for All Seasons – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 25 Feb, 2025
Updated on: 26 Feb, 2025

The courage of conviction: Martin Shaw as Sir Thomas More

By Alice Fowler

Images Ellie Harman

Sir Thomas More is famous as a man of principle. That is the view enshrined in Robert Bolt’s acclaimed play A Man For All Seasons, currently showing at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, with Martin Shaw taking the lead role.

Studying this play at school, I readily absorbed Bolt’s sympathetic portrayal of More as a man of courageous, unshakable conviction. Recently, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s magisterial Wolf Hall series, a less favourable view of More has prevailed.

In Mantel’s depiction, More emerges as a mean-spirited figure who treats his household badly. With Mantel’s depiction colouring my view, how would Bolt’s version – written in the late 1950s – fare? Along with plenty of others, judging by the full house on opening night, I hurried to the Arnaud to find out.

A draw for at least part of the audience, in this Theatre Royal Bath and Jonathan Church production, must be Martin Shaw himself: still best known for TV’s The Professionals, but with a distinguished stage career behind him too.

More’s wife Alice (Abigail Cruttenden) urges him to think of his family, not his principles.

Now aged eighty, Shaw plays More as stately, white-haired and self-willed, refusing to budge an inch to accommodate his capricious monarch, King Henry VIII, or his own wife, Alice. Shaw’s diction is, just occasionally, difficult to understand. Nonetheless, we can admire him as a man who desires to “govern the country by prayer”, in defiance of a mercurial and dangerous king.

Gary Wilmot is excellent as “the common man” – popping up in many guises, from More’s steward Matthew, to a river boatman – and addressing the audience directly to comment on proceedings. In a play that can only end one way – badly for its main protagonist – Wilmot provides welcome humour and relief.

A brooding, brutal force: Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell, with attendant Hari Kang.

Edward Bennett also convinces as Thomas Cromwell: escaping the shadow of Mark Rylance in the BBC’s recent production of Wolf Hall to present Cromwell as a silver-tongued mix of brute force and grasp of detail.

Orlando James as Henry provides the perfect blend of puppyish charm and menace. “Why do you hold against me?” he asks More at one point: all boyish, baffled innocence.

A force that cannot be gainsaid: Henry (Orlando James) tells More he will follow his own path.

Director Jonathan Church, and set and costume designer Simon Higlett, take a traditional approach, transporting us to early 16th century Tudor England. The production’s wood-panelled set is effective, with a flickering fire in the large stone fireplace; a warmth that vanishes as More’s fortunes decline.

Reading Bolt’s play as a teenager, I had little sympathy for More’s wife Alice, who urges him to forsake his principles for the sake of her and his daughter Meg (Anne Kingsnorth), and his own survival. Watching decades later, at a different stage of life, I found myself relating more closely to Alice (Abigail Cruttenden), and her pragmatic approach, in contrast to the dogmatism of her husband.

Approaching a bitter end: Cromwell urges More to think again.

Five hundred years after Henry VIII split from the Catholic church, creating the Church of England, his desperate struggle for a male heir continues to enthral us. In the battle of the Thomases – More or Cromwell – all of us can take a side.

Not sure where you stand? A visit to the Yvonne Arnaud this week may help make up your mind.

A Man For All Seasons continues at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until Saturday March 1. Book online www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk or Box Office 01483 440000.