Life of Galileo

by Bertolt Brecht translated by John Willett

seen at the Young Vic on 7 June 2017

Joe Wright directs Brendan Cowell as Galileo with a supporting cast of ten in this didactic play concerning the struggle between the scientific mind and the entrenched dogmas of the post-Reformation Catholic church.

Galileo's personality is overwhelming in this play as he exults in his astronomical discoveries and relies on the strength of physical observation of phenomena to underpin the realignment of scientific knowledge. Around him the rich and powerful see only the commercial or entertainment advantages of inventions such as the telescope, rather than its usefulness in discovering shadows on the Moon or moons around Jupiter. His disciples are impressed, his family exasperated, his patrons largely boorish, and the church prelates who happen to be intellectual only dabble in his enthusiasms. Even the Barberini pope, taken to be an ally when he is a cardinal, succumbs to prudential arguments and allows Galileo to be intimidated into silence.

All this is rich material for a playwright who delighted in ideological confrontation and the sharp observance of humanity's capacity for blundering blindness. We may feel superior to the dunderheads who found the idea of heliocentrism so threatening, but it is good to be reminded that a simple demonstration of how a fork stuck in an apple remains aligned to the apple when it is rotated can serve to show why we don't fall off a round world or find ourselves upside down on the other side. Even more amusing is Galileo's practical lesson in examining opposed hypotheses to explain the apparent movement of the sun.

But there is perhaps another blindness revealed - that of Galileo's supreme political naivety. As he hectors and lectures, breezily dominating almost everyone around him, he seems disastrously unaware of the complexities of church politics and of their power in the secular world. Only towards the end, after the mere threat of torture caused him to recant his views, does he show a measure of cunning (or savoir faire)in concealing a new manuscript and arranging for it to be smuggled out of Italy to a more sympathetic northern Europe. But somehow this looks like the diminution of a previously heroic figure.

This version of the play is presented in the round, so much so that a ceiling above the acting area is used for planetarium-like projections of the night sky at various crucial points. Furthermore a number of the audience are actually lounging on cushions in the middle of this space; the action takes place mainly on a narrow circular floor between them and the regular auditorium seats, and many of the cast are sitting with this central audience when they are not taking part in a scene. That, the self-conscious announcement of scenes (including 'Scene Five: this has been cut - you can complain to the Young Vic about this decision; their email address is ...'), and the use of a short summary rhyme announced by a small puppet at the beginning of each scene, all form part of the famous Brechtian 'alienation' technique whereby the audience should constantly be reminded that they are watching a performance. The fact that the cast is eclectically dressed, with Galileo himself in jeans and tee-shirt but others in varying degrees of renaissance dress, emphasises the point. (The newly elected pope is ceremonially encased in full regalia as he considers the Galileo problem, but as this garb has not changed much in recent centuries it is debatable whether this counts as modern or renaissance dress.)

It's a long play at times too didactic for its own good, and this is not helped by there being a good deal of shouting by all members of the cast. This may have been forced on them by the acoustic environment created by the layout, but was also probably encouraged by the style of the text, by turns preachy and excitable but very rarely personal. Brendan Cowell holds the show together in a performance of physical and vocal exuberance that must be extremely taxing, but which is essential to reflect the larger-than-life character Brecht has created,