REVIEW: This is why A Man for All Seasons at Chichester Festival Theatre continues to intrigue and challenge us all

What sacrifice would you make to defend your conscience and do what you believed to be right?

Robert Bolt’s classic play has this key question at its heart.

Sir Thomas More, a Catholic and a man of profound belief, is asked to sign up to the King’s plan to break with the Pope and the Catholic Church in Rome, divorce his first wife, and establish himself as supreme head of the Church of England.

The King’s key advisors – not least Thomas Cromwell whose own story is sympathetically told in Wolf Hall – were determined to ensure support for these ambitions through Acts of Succession and Supremacy in the mid 1530s.

Sir Thomas decided that the best way to avoid his own dilemma of conscience was not to add his signature of support while remaining utterly silent, even to his wife, on his reasons for refusal.

He saw his right to remain silent as a legal guarantee that he would not be found guilty of treason and executed.

A Man For All Seasons examines his journey and with forensic care his battle with his own conscience – and the price that he, his wife and their daughter paid.

Martin Shaw plays the role to perfection: understated, frustrated, wearied, concerned for his family, but ultimately determined to go to his death with a conscience that is clear.

Abigail Cruttenden matches these qualities as Alice More.

This may be one of the most famous chapters in English history but its central theme is no less relevant for all of us today. Sir Thomas did not take the easy way out by simply signing his name and is so doing we are all challenged.