Present History: Keegan's A Man for All Seasons
This review was written by new DCist contributor, Christopher Klimek
Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, newly revived at the Keegan Theatre, is probably forever doomed to be stuck in the present. First staged in 1960, and dramatizing events that occurred more than four centuries earlier — Thomas More's refusal-by-silence to sanction King Henry VIII's divorce — the play seems contemporary, as martyr stories inevitably will. After all, who was Thomas More, if not a man who gave his life to stand up against a tyrant seeking to expand the range of executive power?
Many things, it turns out. The patron saint of lawyers, More was, like Shaft, a complicated man. While what compelled him to resign his post as King Henry's Lord Chancellor was the King’s demand for "submission of the clergy", effectively placing the royalty above the church, it’s hard for a modern audience to forget that the specific ill More fell on his sword to oppose was, after all, divorce.
So to accept him as a hero is a hard sell to say the least, even moreso now than when Bolt wrote his play. Bolt's script emphasizes More's brilliant scholarship and unimpeachable honesty, avoiding the traits that would further dampen his latter-day appeal—the enthusiasm with which he jailed and burned "heretics," for example (Today we call them Lutherans.). But thanks to Bolt's sparkling oratory in defense of principle and conscience, this is a play to which true believers of all persuasions can bring their own prejudices.
Director Susan Marie Rhea pulls a bit of a Thomas More herself, refusing to apply a partisan lacquer to the Keegan’s straightforward production. The show is as an actor’s feast, spreading its juiciest material among several parts, and Rhea seems content to stand back and let her gifted cast dig in.
For the most part, it works splendidly. Robert Leembruggen is charismatic and poignant as the Common Man, the changeable servant/boatman/jailer who narrates the play, announcing each new role as he changes costume in front of us. He also handles the various changes to George Lucas’s elegant set, in a clever touch. Carlos Bustamante is wonderfully oily as Richard Rich, the social climber who proves all too eager to adapt his own principles to the prevailing winds. As King Henry, Jon Townson nails his single, memorable scene, playing the ruler as a folksy backslapper who hides his lethal arrogance in a cloak of conviviality.
Less successful is Mark Rhea, who fails to generate any sympathy as Thomas Cromwell, the man charged with delivering More’s head. Was the real Cromwell this one-dimensional a villain? There’s a case to be made for Cromwell righteousness, but Rhea doesn’t make it. But in the title role, John Kerry look-alike Timothy Lynch is likable and commanding, at least until the climactic trial scene, when he seems to address most of his lines directly to the audience. Perhaps we’re meant to play the jury, but if so, the device feels out of step with the show.
Act Two runs a quarter-hour longer than Act One, making an already long evening feel bloated. And there’s an odd turn midway through the second act wherein the Common Man reports the fates of the story’s principals, which feels like an ending when there are 45 minutes yet to go. These two flaws are built into Bolt’s script; on balance, this is a lively, well-acted staging of an admirably complex work, one whose versatility assures us it’ll be firing up ideologues of all flavors for some time to come.
A Man For All Seasons runs through May 12. Tickets are available online.