Roundabout Theatre is putting on A Man For All Season's starring Frank Langella as the martyr Thomas More. This is a solid production, but essentially a one-man show. Someone said that the reason that this play hasn't been revived on Broadway was that the movie was so good - not a great reason, but true enough. Except for Langella's portrayal, all of the other characters (Henry VIII, Wolsey, Rich, Norfolk) are serviceable yet it's hard not to imagine Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, John Hurt, Nigel Davenport in their roles.
Of some interest - the original script (via Wikipedia's entry on the play) by Robert Bolt is quite modern, theatrically speaking. There is a "Common Man" narrating the play and taking on different subsidiary roles as required. This explains, to some extent, the care with which those roles were written.
This production (and the movie) do away with that Brechtian touch, which I imagine is for the better. For while the play is a marvelous scholarly quotation of More's writings, conscience, and tragic defense, there's not much to the endeavor except that the main character is saint while all the rest are sinners. But as long as the saint is played by actors of the caliber of Langella (or Scofield), that's more than good enough.
(The only flaw is that the Ambassador to Spain reminds one too much of a Monty Python character!)
Posted by netrc at October 21, 2008 11:04 AM