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A Man for All Seasons

by

Robert Bolt

 

18th – 20th November 2004

 

 

Text Box: In September 2005, this production of A Man for All Seasons featured prominently in the ‘Gloscars’ – the GDA Awards - with Best Supporting Actor (Tony Pegg – Common Man), runner up for 'Best Production' and nominations for Best Actor (Mike Breeze - Sir Thomas More), Best Actress (Susie Almond – Lady Margaret) and Best Costumes (Ann Dorman and Pat Francis).

 

 

 

The Cast

The Common Man…..........Tony Pegg

Sir Thomas More…..........Mike Breeze

Lady Alice More…..........Lesley Wolowiec

Margaret More…..........Suzie Almond

Will Roper…..........Alistair Anderson

King Henry VIII…..........Kevin Parker

Duke of Norfolk…..........Robert Cunningham

Cardinal Wolsey…..........Ray Davis

Thomas Cromwell…..........Hamish Mclean

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury…..........Charles Dorman

Richard Rich…..........Andrew Leach

Signor Chapuys, Spanish Ambassador…..........Peter Minall

Attendant to Chapuys…..........Jess Ackburg

Woman litigant…..........Avril Dorey

 

Directed by Jack Burgess

 

The Production Team

Assistant Director…..........Lesley Wolowiec

Production / Stage Manager…..........Jackie Herbert

Set Design & Artistic coordination…..........Lynne Gibson

Prompt …..........Avril Dorey

Set construction…..........Russ Herbert, Tony Gibson,

Lighting…..........Jacek Wolowiec

Sound…..........Tony Gibson

Props and Furniture…..........Rachel Bolt, Fiona McLean & Julie Scrivens

Costumes …..........Ann Dorman, Pat Francis

Make-up…..........Jenny Davis

Front-of-house…..........Judy Reed, Gill Mohin

Publicity…..........Jean Burgess, Valerie Dugan

Programmes................Kevin Parker

 

Music provided by Robert James from Upstairs Downstairs and Mike Venn & Her Majesty’s Pleasure

 

Special thanks to:

The Shetland Shop & Painswick Post Office for Ticket Sales, Ann Smith & the Flower Guild For Floral Arrangements, The Royal Oak, The March Hare, Creative Drapes Gloucester and many others.

David Mannering & Jean and Laurence Turner OBE for their financial support of The Painswick Festival

 

Programme Notes

 

Now in its 81st year, Painswick Players is proud to present one of the greatest plays of the last half-century in the superb and compelling setting of St Mary’s Parish Church.

   A Man for All Seasons dramatises the conflict between King Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More, sparked by the king's divorce of his wife and subsequent break with the Catholic Church. For his refusal to confirm by oath King Henry's Act of Succession, which included a repudiation of papal supremacy, More was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded in 1535. His reputation continued to grow after his death and in 1935 the Catholic Church declared him a Saint.

   The play was first produced in 1960 at the Globe Theatre in London to great acclaim, and later had a long Broadway run. In 1966 it was made into an Academy Award winning film by Fred Zinneman, memorably starring Paul Scofield as More.

   Robert Bolt was born and raised in Manchester and served in the RAF during World War II, before going on to Manchester University. Following graduation, he became an English teacher in Somerset during the 1950s. In his time off from teaching, Bolt tried his hand at radio and stage plays, one of which was A Man For All Seasons. Bolt later won the academy award for the film screenplays of both A Man for All Seasons and Dr Zhivago.

   Staging this Festival production of A Man for All Seasons here in the Church provides a setting that does full justice to its historical context.

   As the play opens in 1529, the Nave and Tower of St Mary’s are less than fifty years old and the Reverend Patrick Corbett is our Vicar. It also turns out that the Governor of the Tower of London responsible for holding Sir Thomas More is none other than Sir William Kingston, our Lord of the Manor, who was buried in the church in 1540.

   The church setting, coupled with Bolt’s stunningly impressive script, has also provided us with formidable dramatic and technical challenges. With an experienced and very talented cast - drawn from across the county - and an expert backstage team, I hope you will agree that we have succeeded.

Jack Burgess

 

 

Historical Note

 

“The English are handsome and well proportioned but are also great lovers of themselves … whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say that he looks like an Englishman … they all from time immemorial wear very fine clothes. They take great pleasure in having a quantity of excellent victuals … when they mean to drink a great deal, they go to the tavern and this is done, not only by the men, but by ladies of distinction … they have the incredible courtesy of remaining with their heads uncovered, with an admirable grace, whilst they talk to each other … and in Cheapside too there are fifty two goldsmiths’ shops, so rich and full of silver vessels.”

 

So writes a Venetian diplomat in his account of England in the fifteenth century, an England emerging from a medieval past into renaissance.

   It was a time when merchants might attain to the rank of baron, nobility was not exclusive to rank. Society was based on a system of subordination and symmetry, it was an age governed by protocol and the structures of hierarchy. English law reflected the order of God’s heavenly city, the ‘New Jerusalem’.

   The young Henry VIII had ushered in a new era, his robust presence symbolised the strength of the Tudor dynasty established by his father, but Henry’s determination to secure that dynasty was to give rise to the religious upheaval of the Reformation in England. Thomas More, as Chancellor, was the man caught up, not only in Henry’s battle to secure an heir, but also in the events, which swept away the religious order for which he became a martyr.

Lesley Wolowiec

 

Performance Pictures