The church was cold, the pews were hard and the play we were watching lasted a full three-and-a-half hours. And yet I could not have wished this gripping student production of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons to have been one minute shorter.

Director Griff Rees, who was responsible for a first-class revival of Strindberg’s A Dream Play at the Playhouse in February, found winning form again.

Well known in Fred Zinnemann’s 1966 film version starring Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, the play is rarely seen on stage (owing perhaps to its length). Here an appropriate performance venue was found in the University Church where later religious martyrs Latimer and Ridley were tried. Despite its mushy accoustic, the fine words supplied by Bolt came over clearly, thanks to the excellent diction of the actors.

All the performances were satisfactory, some much more than that. Barney Iley- Williamson’s More showed us both the religious fervour of the man and his fierce intellect, while David Shields impressed as his principal opponent Thomas Cromwell.

Natasha Heliotis and Maya Thomas-Davies supplied sympathetic portraits of his wife and daughter, the latter wooed by a fearless suitor played by Stephen Hyde.

Worthy of special mention, too, were Matija Vlatkovic’s Henry VIII, a monarch as charismatic as he was capricious, and Richard Louis Evans’s Richard Rich (an embarrassment of riches, surely!). This unpleasant young man on the make owned to having studied Machiavelli and then went on to demonstrate how well he had absorbed his teachings.

Costumes and designs (Anouska Lester) lent an authentic period flavour that was also reflected in composer David Allen’s original score for a seven-strong choir and minstrels.