Pitlochry Festival Theatre, May 2005

IN HIS programme note, director Richard Baron points out the similarities between A Man for all Seasons by Robert Bolt and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Even though both are historical plays – Bolt writing about Sir Thomas More in the early 16th century; Miller writing about the 17th century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts – they tell us a lot about the political atmosphere of the 1950s when they were written.

Both are about figures steadfastly sticking to their beliefs and refusing to name names in face of tremendous political pressure: the same kind of pressure that Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee brought to bear on suspected left-wing sympathisers.

It’s an interesting insight, but you don’t have to go back to 50s America to make sense of Bolt’s play. For, in its portrayal of the machinations of power, its debate about personal morality and public presentation and its discussion about whether ethics should give way to pragmatism, it is very much a play for today.

On its opening day, Tony Blair was in the news for publishing his legal advice on the Iraq war. The question about whether the prime minister used the advice selectively to justify a predetermined goal is exactly the same as the one about whether Henry VIII used the Bible selectively to justify over-ruling the Pope and getting a divorce. Thomas More’s absolutism in his refusal to condone the king’s actions contrasts with the easy compromises made by the rest of the ruling class.

Meanwhile, Thomas Cromwell looks like a symbol of today’s judgemental society. Like a one-man tabloid newspaper, he’s forever picking up scraps of information about his potential enemies on the off-chance he might one day use it against them. It creates a very familiar atmosphere of censoriousness, a herd mentality governed by fear.

These debates firing through the play help offset its staginess, although the period costumes on Edward Lipscomb’s conventional set do nothing to counter its old-fashioned air. It’s generally a lively production, however, and Richard Baron tunes in well to Bolt’s sense of humour, both in the narrator figure of the Common Man, played by a chirpy Dennis Conlon, and in More himself.

There’s nothing austere about Dougal Lee’s powerful central performance which is funny and likeable without diminishing the subtle intellectual arguments that are the meat of Bolt’s play. Not only is he a man for all seasons, he’s a pretty sturdy man for the Pitlochry summer season ahead.

© Mark Fisher, 2005