A Man for All Seasons the Play Broadway Ny Times Review
THEATER: PHILP BOSCO IN 'Human being FOR ALL SEASONS'
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Jan 5, 1987
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A FEW of the lines in ''A Homo for All Seasons,'' Robert Bolt'south acclaimed 1960 play now enjoying a faithful product at the Roundabout Theater, conduct an odd spin these days. When the Man in question, Sir Thomas More, says, ''In silence is my safety under the law,'' i'southward thoughts stray from the smashing 16th-century public official to distinctly lesser officials of our own place and time.
The key theme, nevertheless, remains deplorably abiding. A glance around, from Poland to Southward Africa to Chile and Nicaragua, confirms that the conflict betwen the private conscience and the demands of the country has yet to be happily resolved.
The script by Mr. Bolt, who has made something of a specialty of treating moral issues on an epic screen in such movies as ''Lawrence of Arabia'' and ''Dr. Zhivago,'' is never less than intelligent and literate, managing for the most role to avoid pretentiousness and giving a contemporary flavor to a syntax that is as suggestively medieval as Daniel Ettinger'south serviceable set.
But the play is also intellectually thin. The formulation of Thomas More than is so virtuous, then witty, so right that there is no competition. He always has the last discussion. The words are acute and carefully framed, a pleasance to hear, yet after effortlessly winning all the exchanges, More is finally borne downwards by sheer ability, not by the force of argument.
It is inside More than himself that the drama is acted out, equally he struggles to maintain his principles without sacrificing his life. This courtier (''I flatter well,'' he concedes) is non courting martyrdom. ''I have no gustation for the hemlock,'' he tells united states repeatedly, and he knows how to contrivance and evade. Merely finally, the law, in which he has placed his trust, fails to protect him confronting a mercurial Male monarch Henry VIII, who demands the prestigious More than'south approbation of the majestic intention to rid himself of Queen Katharine and so that he may marry Anne Boleyn. Then More is driven to faith itself to sustain him. In one of the play's loveliest images, he tells his his daughter: ''When a human being takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his ain self in his own hands. Like h2o. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.''
Mr. Bolt has given us a big character, and in Philip Bosco's solidly thought-through portrayal, More than is bluff only never blunt, worldly yet private. His personality is all of a piece, and he seeks mainly to exist at peace with himself. He sees easily through both adversaries and quondam allies - ''A man should go where he won't exist tempted,'' he advises the careerist Richard Rich - simply holds his tongue until he is compelled to speak out.
Mr. Bosco'due south More cuts a less elegant effigy than that of the original More, Paul Scofield, whose exquisite cadences still resonate, but he is somehow more believable in his ordinariness and only equally forceful. Mr. Bosco, who came to the role directly from his very funny turn as a philosophic waiter in ''You Never Tin Tell,'' keeps showing new resource.
The direction by Paul Giovanni is mostly steady, holding attention on the words in what is essentially a series of confrontations between More and those who would bend him to the young Rex's will. Mr. Giovanni succumbs to rather cheap effects toward the end, when he permits some soppy music and a saintly light that seems to have been borrowed from ''The Vocal of Bernadette'' to intrude on an interpretation that has until then avoided intimations of saint-liness, even as More himself tried to avoid them.
Led by Mr. Bosco, three other fine performances in major parts give the production its accumulating power. Robert Stattel makes Thomas Cromwell an intriguing figure, at in one case plausible and sinister, exuding a bonhomie edged with cruelty. He is more ofttimes than not smiling, simply the smile is as narrow as his slitted eyes. ''When the King wants something done, I do it,'' is his terrible credo, an apologia that echoes down the corridors of despotism.
Every bit the Common Man, who acts equally narrator and guide and assumes many useful roles along the way, including those of jailer and executioner, Charles Keating is unfailingly amiable, single-mindedly cocky-seeking, surpassingly streetwise and when circumstances require, resolutely ruthless.
The character is Mr. Commodities's cool annotate on the custom of politicians of deifying the common man. Using this Mutual Man to deliver a peroration that indicts the audience as silent accomplices to the destruction of More than is a bit of theatrical overkill on Mr. Bolt's part, but the scenes between Mr. Keating and Mr. Bosco are touching. More recognizes a kinship with this deplorably human being creature who acknowledges More's greatness but cannot rise to it, and is as ready to serve him or beguile him for the clink of a coin.
And Maria Tucci, as More than'south wife, Alice, builds on the role of an uneducated woman who cannot comprehend the bug that are driving her husband to what she can only see as self-destruction, nonetheless finally matches his courage with her own. Her big scene of grief and defiance is tremendously moving. The rest of the cast is not of the quality of the leading players, but these four dominate and for most of the evening continue the production at their ain high level.
As for that thing of relevance, the Common Man, mischievously conceived by Mr. Bolt as our gimmicky, addresses it nigh directly. Referring to the customary tortures of medieval times, he observes slyly, ''We are dealing with a less fastidious age,'' and leaves us to try to imagine in what fashion the 16th century could have been less fastidious than the 20th.
The fact that More's question to Cromwell's call for loyalty - ''Is it my place to say 'expert' to the state's sickness?'' - has lost none of its power or its pertinence over the centuries is a distressing annotate on the condition of the world. Which is a compliment to ''A Man for All Seasons.'' Enduring Truths A Human being FOR ALL SEASONS, by Robert Commodities; directed by Paul Giovanni; scenery by Daniel Ettinger; lighting by Dawn Chiang; costumes by Abigail Murray. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Visitor, Gene Feist, creative director; Todd Haimes, executive director. At 100 East 17th Street.
Sir Thomas More...Philip Bosco; Henry Viii...J. Kenneth Campbell; Knuckles of Norfolk...George Guidall; The Common Human being...Charles Keating; William Roper...Patrick O'Connell; Key Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer...
Ron Randell; Richard Rich...Campbell Scott; Thomas Cromwell...Robert Stattel; Lady Alice More...Maria Tucci; Signor Chapuys...Ted van Griethuysen; Lady Margaret More than...Diane Venora
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/05/theater/theater-philp-bosco-in-man-for-all-seasons.html
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