Sir Thomas More is an Elizabethan play and a dramatic biography based on particular events in the life of the Catholic martyr Thomas More, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor of England during the Reign of Henry VIII. The play is considered to be written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and revised by several writers. The manuscript is particularly notable for a three-page handwritten revision now widely attributed to William Shakespeare.
CAST INCLUDED: Nigel Cooke, Peter Bramhill, Ian Drysdale, Michelle Butterly, Vinette Robinson, Kevin Harvey, Evelyn Duah
Peter Bramhill won the Ian Charleson Award for his multiple roles within the production.
Robert Delamere's production of Thomas More - mostly written in 1592 by Anthony Munday and revised later by a syndicate - begins thrillingly. We witness a full-scale riot by the London working- class against "aliens and strangers" who disrupt the local economy. All this is based on the anti-immigrant uprising of May 1517. And chaos is averted only by the intervention of the sheriff, Thomas More.
In a tremendous scene, purportedly written by Shakespeare, we see More quelling the crowd by sinuous appeals to authority and compassion: at one point he asks the mob to imagine the wretched strangers "plodding to th' ports and coasts for transportation.
The Guardian
★★★★
‘Another of the RSC’s amazing rediscoveries…impressively staged by Robert Delamere to highlight its contemporary resonance.’
The Times