THE LIFE OF GALILEO. To 25 August.
London
THE LIFE OF GALILEO
by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by David Hare
Word of Mouth Theatre Company at bac To 25 August 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 5.30pm
Runs 2hr 55min One interval
TICKETS 020 7223 2223
www.bac.org.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 9 August
A bright jewel – if slightly rough-set – in London's theatrical summer. Let's get this over first: there have been all-round better acted Brecht productions. Yet the acting here always makes the play's point and I'd surrender any amount of cushioned technique for the raw, vivid clarity and intellectual excitement of David Salter's production.
It breathes – it screams – life. Brecht - and his co-writers - wrote and re-wrote the play over two decades, some of them spent, like Galileo, avoiding persecution. It was overtaken by events: the first nuclear explosions, which lie behind Galileo's fearful speech about science divorcing itself from the people. Sad to see how Benjamin Ibbott's lively-minded boy Andrea grows into Elliot Cowan's callow optimist blithely rejecting his ex-teacher's dystopic view of science's black possibilities.
Ted Van Griethuysen is a near ideal Galileo. First and last seen eating, he's forever seeking a prosperous, pain-free life. Yet, alongside this there's his vast intellectual enthusiasm for the triumph of truth and reason over complacency and superstition. 'Everything is moving' is his cry of hope. But with church and potentates having vested interests, everything easily grinds to a halt again.
Chummily explosive, he's aware industrialists support him because his ideas encourage their enterprises, while landlords fear he'll put independent ideas into servile peasant heads; the church tolerates him if his ideas are presented as hypotheses, in Latin and so unavailable to the masses.
Kept under ecclesiastical house-arrest, old and near blind, Galileo becomes a Brechtian fox, achieving his ends by copying his Discorsi before the Church nabs what they think's the sole manuscript. Van Griethuysen conveys the same passion for physical and mental nourishment when expansively hopeful of influencing the world and when finally huddled thoughtfully over his soup.
Strong contributions too from Sean Baker as the enigmatic Cardinal Inquisitor, wearing his weighty authority with the light touch of assurance, and Nigel Anthony's scientist-pope Barberini. Most unpompous, his furrowed face shows how, even while he's being power-dressed in papal regalia, the need to maintain the Church's stability weighs heavily on his rational mind. And Julie Marabelle's set cleverly creates a clinically white space for Galileo's science, shading off as an orb amid surrounding dark, pierced only by mathematicians' calculations.
Pre-scene captions are the only bit of Brechtian paraphernalia around. Inspired by the play's spirit of scientific truth, I must point out there's a grammatical error in the caption to scene 3, and spelling mistakes in those for scenes 5 and 9.
Galileo Galilei: Ted Van Griethuysen
Young Andrea: Benjamin Ibbott
Mrs Sarti: Sarah Collier
Ludovico/1st Monk/Cosimo de Medici: Ian Bass
Priuli/Bellarmin/Old Cardinal: Roger Swaine
Sagredo/Vanni: Stephen Finegold
Virginia: Esther Adams
Little Monk/Philosopher: Ross Dunsmore
Mathematician/Barberini/Astronomer: Nigel Anthony
Federzoni/2nd Monk: Mark Cartmel
Young Cosimo de Medici: Josh Lawton
Chamberlain/Cardinal Inquisitor: Sean Baker
Andrea/Clavius: Elliot Cowan
Man: Tom Walsingham
Peasant: Tom Nolan
Director: David Salter
Designer: Julie Marabelle
Lighting: Mark Dymock
Sound/Music: Peter Weitz
Puppeteer: Gary Card
2002-08-10 10:33:48