Playwright: Robert Bolt
At: Timeline Theatre Company at Baird Hall, 615 W. Wellington Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 281-8463; $25
Runs through: Dec. 18
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
In the second act of Robert Bolt's play, our hero declares that the truth of the matter in question is less important than WHAT he believes to be true, and less important than that he BELIEVES as he does, and less important than that HE believes in it ( adding mischievously, 'I trust I make myself obscure' ) . But with that statement, he allows an audience of Descartes-thumping secularists to embrace the courage of this stubborn Man of Conscience despite his historical status as a lawyer, a politician, and, yep, a saint.
For the event earning Sir Thomas More his martyrdom in 1535 and canonization four centuries later was no mystical bolt-from-the-blue, but a documented act of civil disobedience. The Catholic church would not permit King Henry VIII to divorce his wife, so England's ruler proceeded to declare its authority invalid. Sir Thomas, then his Lord Chancellor, refused to approve the royal prerogative—not openly protesting it, but simply keeping silent and trusting to the law for protection. But a monarch capable of warring with major religions can also find capital crime in opposition to individual will.
Edward Sobel is well aware of the egocentric aspects of Taking A Stand, and saturates his directorial concept in humble intimacy: costuming his actors in shabby contemporary garb with minimal period detail, for example, on scenery comprised almost wholly of bare industrial-finish ramps ( albeit cunningly outfitted with a water-filled floor trough and snap-in walkways ) . David Parkes' Sir Thomas is presented as a foozly and freckled country professor, his argumentative prowess no match for the casuistic tactics of his enemies, led by John Carter Brown as the weasely Thomas Cromwell. Sobel's crowning touch, however, is his elevation of The Common Man, played by the incomparable Mark Richard, from a protean device usually shrugged off as comic relief to a welcome voice of reason, however ignoble.
Playgoers seeking pageantry and lofty speeches may be disappointed by the domesticity of Sobel's dramatic universe. But if the title's 'all seasons' includes here and now, this Timeline Theatre production serves as a timely reminder that the measure of a society is determined by how it treats its dissenters.