A Life of Galileo

Synopsis

Galileo's astonishing proof that the earth moves around the sun shatters a belief held sacred for two thousand years. Considered an enemy of humanity, he's threatened with torture and faced with a terrible choice: integrity versus intellectual sell-out.

Our Review:

7 July 2006

About midway through the first act of David Hare’s thrilling new version of Bertolt Brecht’s sprawling epic drama about the seismic medieval stand-off between science and religion, a moment of doubt suddenly crept in. What would happen today if Western belief systems went completely haywire after some astro-physicist or other suddenly discovered that Galileo got it wrong?

Supposing a new breed of boffins was able to prove that the solar system isn’t what modern science has always told us and that the planets are in fact attached to a celestial sphere that moves around the earth while the moon is made of cheese?

I don’t know if that’s what is meant by the famous Brechtian "alienation" effect, but Hare’s script – an impassioned variation on his 1994 Almeida Theatre version - and Howard Davies’ knock-out production, performed mostly within a skeleton observatory set against a sky at night projection of the moon, certainly makes the earth - or at least the NT Olivier st...

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Latest User Review

62.6.139.13) - 5 October 2006:

Sometimes you know in advance that a play will be hard work and three hours of discourse on astronomy, mathematics and theology is certainly heavy going -Stoppard fans will lap it up. The decision to stage this in modern dress is nonsensical as it removes any context of a battle for minds between the new frontiers of science and the church clinging to old beliefs. It is also bizarre that after establishing Galileo as someone so passionately defending his Copernicun views that his 23 days in the hands of the Inquisition and, apparently, painless recantation are portrayed off-stage. However, there is much to admire with some fine staging and excellent performances and the opportunity to see the incomparable Simon Russell Beale for just £10 is too good to miss....

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