A Man For All Seasons (Theatre Royal Bath and touring). Verdict: Shaw fire antique. Rating:. Having turned 80 on Tuesday, Martin Shaw has come a long way since his bubble-permed, pin-up days as Ray Doyle in the British, Starsky & Hutch-inspired Seventies’ cop show The Professionals.
![[He became a less volatile figure on TV as Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently, but he’s always impressed on stage, and this is his second pop at Robert Bolt’s perennial war-horse A Man For All Seasons (his first was in 2006)]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/24/00/94459919-14319431-image-a-2_1737678476999.jpg)
He became a less volatile figure on TV as Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently, but he’s always impressed on stage, and this is his second pop at Robert Bolt’s perennial war-horse A Man For All Seasons (his first was in 2006). It tells the story of Catholic saint Thomas More’s stand against Henry VIII, or more precisely, Henry’s determination to defy the Pope, appoint himself head of the Church in England, ditch Catherine of Aragon and have a go at siring a son by another woman (Anne Boleyn).
![[Co-writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson have cunningly put at the play’s centre the top Washington lawyer Don Pearlman]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/24/00/94459915-14319431-image-a-3_1737678485999.jpg)
One-part political thriller and three-parts ethical quandry, it presents More in a more favourable light than Hilary Mantel did in Wolf Hall. Like suffering Christ under the judgement of Cromwell’s Pontius Pilate, More is on a holy mission. The elephantine question in the room, however, is if Shaw is too old for a man who went to the block at the age of 57.
![[The Lonely Londoners is a familiar tale of disenchantment among West Indian immigrants of the 1950s, adapted by Roy Williams from Sam Selvon’s ground-breaking 1956 novel]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/24/00/94459957-14319431-image-a-5_1737678529065.jpg)
Having turned 80 on Tuesday, Martin Shaw (pictured) has come a long way since his bubble-permed, pin-up days as Ray Doyle in the British, Starsky & Hutch-inspired Seventies’ cop show The Professionals. I’d be thrilled to carry myself half so well at the age of 80, but Shaw’s reduced energy does make him seem resigned to his dismal fate from the start.
![[First seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre last year, it’s written in Trinidadian patois and relays the high hopes of young men arriving in London after the sunshine of the Caribbean — only to be greeted by hunger, racism, and a miserable climate]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/24/00/94459961-14319431-image-a-6_1737678551363.jpg)
