Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- ``A Man for All Seasons'' is Robert Bolt's 1960 play, equal parts history and hagiography, about Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century author, lawyer and politician who died for his religious beliefs. The Broadway revival that opened last night stars Frank Langella in a bravura performance that glorifies Langella as much as More. The Roundabout Theatre Company production, though wayward, is at least good enough for one season.

More was, among other things, for three years Lord Chancellor of England, a trusted protege of Henry VIII, and the author of the immortal ``Utopia,'' which latter aspect Bolt bypasses. Instead, his play implicitly affirms the Catholic Church's sanctification of More, three centuries after his beheading. He chose to stick by the pope rather than condone Henry's divorce from Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn.

The real More wasn't quite as saintly as Bolt makes him out. He was a scurrilous pamphleteer who helped hound William Tyndale to his execution, and a bit of a hedonist as well as a vernacular writer C. S. Lewis called ``the first great Cockney humorist.'' What Bolt does not consider is whether dying for blind adherence to Catholic dogma is as good a cause as, say, death for some form of freedom.

No Common Man

The 1960 play is more interesting than the subsequent movie version (even if Bolt wrote the script). In the play, Bolt used various Brechtian devices, notably the creation of the Common Man, a character who functions as narrator, Protean assumer of sundry supporting parts and a kind of gutter chorus: He is the opportunist, the compromiser, the inglorious survivor. His omission from the film is what Doug Hughes's revival simplifyingly adopts.

Bolt's More was magnificently created on stage and screen by Paul Scofield with tremendously effective understatement. Langella enacts him showily: much more loudly, more slowly and ponderously, in American English, and with self-serving ostentation. Add to this Hughes's uncharacteristically pedestrian staging -- as well as several injudicious cuts -- and a good deal is forfeited.

For example, the shattering final visit by his family to the imprisoned More, pleading with him to sign the oath of allegiance (with obvious modern allusion), fails to be fully moving.

Creepy Persecutor

The supporting cast is uneven. Patrick Page is an amusingly physical, even saltatory, King Henry; Michael Gill a believably would-be friendly Duke of Norfolk; Zach Grenier, as Thomas Cromwell, a properly creepy persecutor; and Triney Sandoval a suitably slippery Spanish ambassador. Dakin Matthews's cynical Cardinal Wolsey and Michael Esper's bluntly decent Roper, More's son-in-law, also pass muster.

But I am less pleased with Maryann Plunkett's too prosaic Alice, wife to More, and thoroughly displeased with Hannah Cabell's stilted, unfeminine Margaret, More's meant-to-be beautiful and learned daughter. As Richard Rich, the weak and vacillating supposed friend and ultimate betrayer of More, Jeremy Strong is much too obviously sleazy, and George Morfogen does nothing with Archbishop Cranmer, one of More's inquisitors. The discrepancy in the cast's accents -- everything from suggested British to all kinds of American -- is also less than helpful.

Clash of Ideas

The gifted Santo Loquasto has come up with one of his rare lackluster sets, but Catherine Zuber's sober costumes are unassumingly appropriate, and David Lander's lighting tries hard to supplement the too-Spartan scenery.

Yet with all this unevenness, this is still a play that is both literate and theatrical, and able to hold our interest. There remains an arresting clash of ideas, as well as More's gripping attempt to make his rigorous silence, as opposed to voiced disapproval, protect him within the law, a law his enemies manage to twist to their purpose.

Through Dec. 7 at the American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St. Information: +1-212-719-1300; http://www.roundabouttheatre.org.

(John Simon is the New York drama critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: John Simon in New York at jis1925@aol.com.

Last Updated: October 7, 2008 22:30 EDT