Thomas More

Play Opened 5 January 2006, Closed 14 January 2006

Trafalgar Studios 1 At the Whitehall Theatre, Whitehall, London

"I am ashamed that freeborn Englishmen, having beaten strangers within their own homes, should thus be braved and abused by them at home." Thomas More Act I Scene i

Shakespeare's 'banned' play written in collaboration with Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle. Race riots and dissent abound in London as a result of asylum seekers from the continent fleeing religious persecution. Londoners see them as a threat to their employment and relationships. Thomas More attempts to quell the uprising with wise words pleading for racial harmony.

"Robert Delamere's production sweeps assuredly through social history" The Daily Mail

Robert Delamre, who directs, has opted for predominantly modern dress. I think this is a mistake - it makes More's lines about the refugees less remarkable, less ahead of their time, than they otherwise would. But Nigel Cooke gives a fine, humourous, well-judged performance as More himself; and the later scenes are often livelier than one might have hoped. They can be touching, amusing, even surprising. At one point More examinines his urine, finds gravel in it and makes a saronic joke. It's the kind of thing that used to make well-bred classicists despair of Elizabethan barbarism." The Sunday Telegraph

"Robert Delamere directs a lucid, modern-dress production, in which the race riots are caught with frightening ferocity and Nigel Cooke provides a highly sympathetic portrait of the hero"
The Daily Telegraph

"Robert Delamere's thrilling revival of Thomas More, a strong and subtle political tragedy by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Dekker, Heywood and Shakespeare. In the 1590s this play was on dangerous ground and censored because of its hero's Catholicism... The play also begins with an electrifying, two-edged portrait of anti-immigration riots in London. More calms the city by pleading for racial understanding. This might be food for thought for our own electioneering politicians." The Independent on Sunday

"The ensemble brings freshness and energy... it says much for Nigel Cooke, leading Robert Delamere's strong cast, that he never becomes a prig or an irritant but maintains an infectious warmth and unaffected decency throughout" The Times

"This is one of the few stagings ever of Thomas More, which was written in the 1590s. No surprise there, if this is thought of as a play by Henry Chettle and Anthony Munday, names that have never sent people scurrying to the stalls. But considered as a work with a scene that may be by Shakespeare, its non-production becomes startling. And since that scene pivots on a plea to a ravening mob to treat immigrants kindly, Robert Delamere's staging begins to look like something of a coup, or a really canny piece of timing by the RSC. Not that it's all that terrific as a play. It comes and goes without very clear development and with smudgy explanations, as you'd expect from a drama thought to be the work of five playwrights, including Shakespeare." The Observer