Peter Viney's Blog

Life of Galileo
by Bertolt Brecht
Translation by John Willett

Directed by Joe Wright

Designed by Lizzie Clachan
Music Tom Rowlands
Dramaturg Sarah Tipple

Young Vic Theatre, London
Saturday 27th May 2017, 14.30

CAST:
Ayesha Antoine – Mrs Sarti / Senator / Clavius / dancing girl / Vanni / Individual / 3rd boy
Jason Barnett  – Federzoni / Fat prelate / Cardinal Bellarmin / Ballad Singer / Clerk
Brendan Cowell – Galileo
Billy Howle – Andrea / A monk / Dancing girl / Pope’s attendant
Paul Hunter – Basket maker / Sagredo / Philosopher / Inquisitor / Frontier Guard
Joshua James – Ludovico / Chamberlain / Scholar / Pope’s attendant / Peasant
Bettrys Jones – Senator / Cosimo di Medici / Very Old Cardinal / Dancing girl / Ballad Singer’s wife / Gaffone / First boy
Alex Murdoch – The Doge / Court Lady / Little monk / Second clerk / Individual / Giuseppe
Brian Pettifer – Procurator / Cardinal Barberini / The Pope / Mucius / A monk
Anjana Vasan – Virginia, Galileo’s daughter / mathematician
Sarah Wright – puppeteer / poet / court lady / first clerk / Ludovio’s servant / Official

“Brechtian” has never been a positive word in my theatrical vocabulary. I file it with “didactic”, “stilted” and “dull.”  Around the time of Sergeant Pepper I had to do a production design and notes on  Life of Galileo (which then had “The” at the front). I’ve seen it since too, and never liked the play.  I’ve never been fond of anything by Brecht. This is  a major new production. I have some sympathy for Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times, who (again) got sidetracked into arguing the historical facts and Brecht’s inaccuracies and political bias, rather than reviewing the play, well, he gave it two stars.  I read Brecht’s prologue notes and he addresses several of Christopher Hart’s complaints about historical accuracy, stating it should not be played as an attack on the church, and pointing out the church’s early role in education. It’s a bit like having the “Richard III Society” review a production of the Shakespeare play.

The main attraction for us was film director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina, Hanna, Pan). Anna Karenina is one of the most popular pages on this blog. Another plus I hoped was a different translation.  I thought the Desmond I. Vesey translation (as in my 1965 edition) sterile. The Willets translation used here is of similar vintage. In 101 Greatest Plays (of which it is one) Michael Billington mentions three other versions, including one by David Hare.

The story is Galileo’s role in discovering planetary motion, the church’s opposition, and that in the end, when “shown the instruments”of the Inquisition, he recanted and denied his own discoveries. He managed to get his disciple, Andrea, to smuggle his Discorsi out of Italy for publication.

Every review mentions the three hour running time. Well, it started at 2.34 and finished at 5.22 with a 15 minute interval. We walked to Waterloo and caught the 17.35 train with five minutes to spare. I make that running time no more than 2 hours 35 minutes, so not abnormal at all, but I agree, it did seem far, far longer. Much of that was Scene 14, the house of exile in the country where Galileo speaks largely uninterrupted for ages. I just looked up my edition and found much underlining in red. My much younger self found lines significant back then.

“your cry of jubilation over some new achievement may be answered by a universal cry of horror”

It even adds an exclamation mark in the margin. I was very young. Brecht rewrote the play after Hiroshima. This would be one of the new bits.

I found the awful thumping mindless monotonous music in the fifteen minutes before the play started so boring, that anything afterwards was going to be light relief. In contrast the music during the heavenly projections was sublime and at the end(with the galaxies) quite magnificent. No doubt by the same hand too.

The stage was not so much in the round as in the doughnut. Tickets in the centre of the ring can be booked and you get cushions to lie on and look at the circular projection screen, a kind of planetarium above the whole acting area. I would have liked that, especially the lying down, as the seat in row D had a foot bar that was too high but a floor that was too low. Though lying down I might have drifted off in some of the longer monologues. And even the shorter ones are pretty long. It means the whole play is about rings, and moving around a centre, appropriately. In the few minutes before the start, the cast are mixing in with the groundlings.

Brendan Cowell as Galileo

The whirlwind at the center is the huge energy of Brendan Cowell as Galileo. He is an astonishingly powerful earthy presence, with bushy beard, T shirt, sagging scruffy jeans. The rest of the cast switch roles at speed. There is a mix of modern … an Inquisitor who looks like a Mafiosi, fascist guards, sexy gold spangled dancers, and full Catholic drag, though there are cheeky additions like a football scarf over Cardinal’s red robes.

Lighting changes and timing and projection had me gasping with admiration, and I truly believe that no one could do Brecht’s play better. That’s not the issue. The issue is the play which I still find at its heart dull, didactic, preachy, and in spite of all the well-choreographed  running around, intrinsically static. Brecht was almost a stranger to rapid dialogue interchange. The Willets translation was claimed to be more colloquial, but really not much more, if any.  The virtue is that it stays close to Brecht’s text, while the more modern versions are freer. I was not converted from my intrinsic dislike of the playwright. I saw a lot of Brecht in the late 60s / early 70s.

The direction is endlessly inventive. Advance publicity staes that 11 actors play 68 characters, I prefer “roles”. “Character” is too strong a word for Brecht.  I don’t think there any “characters” in the play with the possible exception of Andrea. Brecht writes “mouthpieces.” Look at the cast list. There are many names there that I don’t recognise from watching the play.

Brian Pettifer

Joe Wright has all sorts of devices to keep it interesting, so that in the long pope scene, we start with the pope in his underpants and watch him slowly and carefully robed with bizarre underpinnings and robe toppings. Brian Pettifer created a wonderful series of prelates, and always reminds me of his role as Biles in my favourite 60s film, If ….  And its sequels O, Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital.

Galileo (Brendan Cowell) explains gravity to Andrea (Billy Howle)

Brendan Cowell as Galileo and Billy Howle as Andrea made a good team, with Howle’s reactive acting deserving of special mention. He has to do a very great deal of listening, but also shone as he lost his temper, negotiated customs to get the discourses across the frontier, He moves from a child to a man as Galileo’s disciple. He even does a short gold-sequined cameo as a third dancing girl.

Joshua James as the fiancé, Anjana Vasan as Virginia

Ajana Vasan plays the daughter, Virginia, who loses her aristocratic fiancé (one of several excellent parts by Joshua James) because of her father’s intransigence, and touchingly stays in her unused wedding dress from then on in this production,  a touch of Miss Haversham. When we move on a decade, she’s added a cardigan to it. Some comment that Brecht underestimated her role in the actual history.

Jason Barnett as the singer

Jason Barnett played a plethora of roles with an easy naturalness, as well as leading the one song powerfully.

There are scenes I like, such as when the mathematicians refuse to look through the telescope. The projections of the moon, Jupiter, the fiery sun, and at the end galaxies to music were so good I wanted more projection and less talking.

Puppets were used for the rhymes at the start of each scene, and Brendan Cowell had “stepping outside the role” bits such as announcing that Sene 5 had been cut … it’s set in Florence during the plague. I fancy there were other cuts too.

There are many short appearances by new characters in various costumes to keep things moving, but you go back to the base story, and it has never excited me. Brecht believed he was creating theatre for the workers, but I find his “parables for the theatre” anything but popular work. The great reviews this has attracted are down to the life force of Brendan Cowell dragging the weight of the play into something better than the original.

Overall: ***

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
The Guardian thought the kaleidescopic production detracted from the text. Whereas I thought the text detracted from the kaleidescopic production.

5
Debbie Gilpin, Broadway World *****
4
Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph ****
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ****
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ****
Natasha Tripney, The Stage, ****
Neil Norman, Daily Express ****
3
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***
2
Christopher Hart, Sunday Times **

JOE WRIGHT – ON THIS BLOG
Anna Karenina (film)
Hanna (film)

BRIAN PETTIFER
Platonov, by Anton Chekhov, version by David Hare, Chichester Festival Theatre
Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov, version by David Hare, Chichester Festival Theatre

ANJANA VASAN
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Globe 2016 (Hermia)