Distaste for authority

The highlights of Brecht’s Life of Galileo are packed into the opening hour. As the astronomer glimpses new worlds through his telescope, we get a palpable sense of his wonder and astonishment. The effect of these revelations on the mediaeval mind comes through in simple, thundering utterances. ‘The moon has no light of its own.’ ‘The earth is a star like any other.’ ‘Heaven has been abolished.’ It’s thrilling to see aeons of Aristotelian tradition being shattered and remade in the space of a couple of cloudless evenings on an Italian hillside. But the play drags once Galileo comes into conflict with the Church.

The Faith versus Reason ding-dong becomes wordy and repetitive. Brecht can’t find a subtler or spicier line of argument for Galileo than ‘The man who knows the truth and denies it is a criminal.’ And he can’t think up a single decent argument for the Church. Bad craftsmanship. The best playwrights make their hero’s opponents as powerful, ingenious and resourceful as possible, but Brecht allows his distaste for authority to seep into his portrayal of the Church, whose cardinals are sly, self-righteous bigots incapable of presenting their position persuasively. Pity. By failing to arm the cardinals intellectually, Brecht doesn’t undermine the cardinals, he undermines his play.

Bunny Christie’s magical design integrates magnificent views of the moon into an overarching sphere representing the cosmos. Despite its longueurs, David Hare’s adaptation has flashes of wonderful lyricism. In the closing scene, a young astronomer prepares to smuggle Galileo’s last treatise out of Italy into northern Europe. Galileo: ‘Be careful as you go through Germany with the truth under your coat.’ A line that knocks on the door of posterity. Best of all is Simon Russell Beale, who seems to have spent the last year or two portraying bumbling brainboxes in rather contrived sitting-room comedies.