No, the title doesn’t make sense.  Thomas More was twice married and fathered at least four children, and anyway, he’d be 450 or so now. 

My DCist review of the Keegan Theatre’s production of A Man for All Seasons is here.  My unedited version is here:

Like any story about a martyr, Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, newly revived at the Keegan Theatre, is probably forever doomed to be read as a commentary on 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 almost in spite of itself. After all, what was Thomas More, if not a man who gave his life to stand up for the rule of law against a tyrant seeking to expand the range of executive power? 

Many things, it turns out.  More, like Shaft, was a complicated man.  While one could argue that the principle that compelled him to resign in protest his post as King Henry’s Lord Chancellor was “submission of the clergy,” effectively placing the royalty above the law of the Catholic church, what it really came down to was his opposition to divorce.

So for a modern audience 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, based in part on More’s letters and the transcript of his 1534 trial for treason, emphasizes More’s brilliant scholarship and unimpeachable honesty, avoiding the elements of his character 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 and come away convinced that More has nobly taken one for the team – whichever team it might be. 

It is perhaps because the text is so front-loaded with potential inference that 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, Timothy Lynch (OMG, he looks just like John Kerry!) is likeable 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. 

  

There are a couple of other problems: 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 — the one that won him the Tony Award and then the Oscar when he adapted it for the movies —but there it is.  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.