Near-perfect version of Brecht's classic Galileo

The Life of Galileo
National Theatre
Illtyd Harrington

THE renowned mathematician and physicist Galileo developed the telescope in 1609 and within a year challenged the whole theory that the earth was the centre of the universe.
The thought-police of the Roman Catholic Church eventually got round to him and in 1633 he was condemned. After being threatened with torture, he recanted and spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest secretly continuining his researches.
Bertolt Brecht, the German Communist playwright, originally wrote this play in 1938.
This version by David Hare cuts no corners and director Howard Davies, with his excellent designer Bunny Christie, makes this a memorable visit to the theatre, which is not for the complacent or brain-dead.
Simon Russell Beale as Galileo plays a restless scientist with a relentless curiosity. It could well be among the greatest performances of the decade.
Charles Loughton tried it in 1947. Richard Griffiths in 1984. And Mike Gambon played the part in 1990.
The forces of the captors are Cardinal Inquisitor (Oliver Ford Davies), a man eager to stab out the slightest non-conformity, but Galileo is a big and cunning fish.
Inexorably they stem the flood even in spite of the fact that the world’s boundaries were expanding. To him, Galileo is even more dangerous than Luther was.
Galileo believes that a man who possesses Truth and refuses to use it is a criminal. There is an intriguing vision of masked carnival dancers towards the end, which heightens the atmosphere with Paddy Konnene’s excellent music.
The enduring message of one individual confronting the system has no easy moral answer but it is still relevant and this is what demands some thought from Brecht’s audience. It is not an attack on the Church, but on the day I saw it I listened to Professor Julian Savulescu, an expert on applied ethics, at Oxford University, replying to the threat of ex-communication of those Catholics who engage in embryonic research. The professor said: “You can say it has slipped back to the Inquisition. This amounts to religious persecution of scientists which has no place in modern liberal society.”
It took until 1992 for a Papal Commission to admit that Galileo was more perceptive than his critics.
The National Theatre seems to have the timing correct and in this production it neared perfection with superb ensemble playing.

Until August 8

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