Word: bolt
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...attention to the students, the ones most affected by their decisions. Their recent reform still fails to address the exam problem and the inconvenience of trying to compete for summer jobs with students who finish school in early May. (Heaven forbid that Yale do something right, and a lightening bolt plus two divine interventions should Harvard ever admit it.) Harvard's professors should extend themselves a little more for their students, and moving the college's starting date back to early September would help immeasurably. Of course, I've heard that the green flies of Maine are much less ferocious...
More was no martyr by temperament. In Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, he is a man splendidly fit for life, witty and compassionate, loving both God and His world. Unable to bring himself to consent to the Act of Succession, which legitimates Henry's divorce from Catharine of Aragon, he seeks safety in silence, counting on the law to protect him. In the hands of men like Thomas Cromwell, however, the law is an instrument that can be bent, Nixon-like, to suit any ends, and More is condemned finally on the basis of suborned evidence...
...first act begins unimpressively enough. After a monologue by Bolt's Brechtian narrator-figure, The Common Man, follows a scene marked by particularly sloppy blocking, which has Miller putting his arms around everyone in sight. But the action soon starts to pick up when More confronts Cardinal Wolsey (craftily portrayed by Chris Clemenson), who warns him of the potential conflict between private conscience and the demands of state...
There are plenty of juicy parts in Bolt's play, and Manulis's cast manages to carry most of them off with a fair degree of competence. Michael Kriesman as the Duke of Norfolk, More's friend, aptly embodies the gusty energy of Tudor aristocracy, while Jon Goerner seems made for the role of the slimy Spanish ambassador Signor Chapuys. Gene Sykes also turns in a clever performance as The Common Man, whose life, with its daily compromises and bartering of self, Bolt considers the analogue...
...most innovative dramatic device Bolt uses in A Man for All Seasons is his narrator, who, in his various guises, keeps calling attention to our kinship with him. We might want to identify with Sir Thomas, Bolt intimates, but in truth we are no better than the jury that condemns him. In this production, we in fact become that jury--it is to us Cromwell turns as he urges conviction. In our role as jurors, we judge More guilty; but in our role as audience, we understand his motives for dying, and judge their dramatization a success...