A Man for All Seasons is a departure from the usual run of contemporary comedies, musicals and heartwarming dramas on the Theater Project’s stage. Robert Bolt’s 1961 play is a period piece, a doublet-and-hose costume drama written in elegant but not archaic prose, and performed on Greg Trochlil’s impressive multi-level, wood-paneled set, dominated by a high mullioned window. It’s also a play of ideas: ideas about power, responsibility, faith, conscience and class. In his director’s notes, Danny Eaton insists that “its theme is as timely as ever … namely, the willingness and the strength to take a stand, hold to what is right… rather than what may be simply expedient.”
The man in the title is Sir Thomas More, lawyer, scholar and advisor to King Henry VIII. More was executed in 1535 after refusing to endorse the first of his sovereign’s several divorces and the king’s repudiation of papal authority. He found himself squeezed between the demands of the times and those of his conscience. Almost everyone else in the realm was willing to sign on to the king’s actions, no matter their true feelings, because it was more convenient and less dangerous. More kept silent on the matter, neither approving nor condemning, but his silence spoke more loudly than a public denunciation.
Bolt’s Thomas More is, in the playwright’s words, a “supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person,” and all those qualities are evident in Robert Lunde’s satisfyingly low-key performance. Ranged against More and his stubborn principles are both friends and foes. The blunt, practical Duke of Norfolk (a wry, edgy Steve Henderson) despises More’s enemies and the king’s mandates but knuckles under to them. Thomas Cromwell, the monarch’s chief enforcer, is an absolute snake, given a wonderfully cold-blooded performance by Sam Rush.
The ambitious Richard Rich becomes Cromwell’s cat’s-paw after unsuccessfully seeking More’s patronage, and it’s a pleasure to watch Keith Bailey grow from eager novice to cunning courtier. Even Stuart Gamble’s pompous Cardinal Woolsey, the Pope’s head man in Britain, bends with the wind, urging More to “just see facts head-on, without that horrible moral squint.”
The randy, boisterous King Henry (Robert H. Clark III) needs More’s assent because “you are honest. More to the point, you’re known to be honest.” In More’s own household, his wife Alice (Katrina Ferguson) is angry and heartsick at his obstinacy; his hot-headed son-in-law William (Steve Pierce) blows hot and cold; only his brainy daughter Margaret (Mia Cain, a talented teen) truly understands and supports him.
The gulf between More’s century and ours, and between the play’s weighty moral questions and our usual mundane concerns, is mediated by Bolt’s narrator, called simply the Common Man. Nimbly portrayed by newcomer Daniel Rios, he is a Brechtian figure, casually addressing the audience and playing all the lower-class parts, becoming More’s servingman, boatman, jailer (who speaks for all of them when he says, “I’m just a plain, simple man trying to stay out of trouble”) and finally his executioner.
The Theater Project’s A Man for All Seasons is not a play for all audiences, but it provides this season’s most nourishing seasoning.
Through April 4, Majestic Theater, 131 Elm St., West Springfield, (413) 747-7797, www.majestictheater.com.
