The Life of Galileo
By Bertolt Brecht
In a new translation by David Hare
Directed by Richard Wherrett
With John Howard as Galileo
Sydney Theatre Company
Opera House, Sydney until July 20
Reviewed by Allen Myers
This new production of Brecht's Galileo has caused some debate in the Sydney media, and not only on the reviews pages. Even that pompous prig Diamond Jim McClelland weighed in on the Sydney Morning Herald op-ed page with an attack on Brecht for alleged "opportunistic obeisance to the fundamentalist religion of Stalinism". (After a very brief fling with Trotskyism in his youth, Diamond Jim used anti-Stalinism as a transition to obeisance to capitalism, thereby securing himself a lifelong seat on the Canberra gravy train.)
McClelland, defending this production against the Herald's reviewer, James Waites, credits director Richard Wherrett with rescuing the play from Brecht's "familiar Marxist preachments". Wherrett indeed deserves considerable credit, but for presenting Galileo thoroughly in the spirit of Brecht, not Bowdlerising him as McClelland imagines.
For all the apparent simplicity of its plot, Galileo is a quite complex play, debating the relative role of individuals and larger objective forces in making history, and the moral/political choices which are required as a result. The play, like life, presents no neat and indisputable answers to these questions. The fact that McClelland can dispute with Waites over Brecht's or the director's "real" attitude to Galileo is an indication of how well Wherrett has preserved the dilemmas of Brecht's text.
Brecht doesn't make it easy for either actors or director, the play having minimal action and being studded with long, almost set-piece debates. In this production, much of the relief from the danger of intellectual overload in a very long (three-hour) performance is provided by Michael Scott-Mitchell's brilliant set. The set alone is worth the price of admission, though part of its brilliance is that it complements the play rather than competing with it.
There are weaknesses in the production. The use of adult actors for the two child characters doesn't work. Occasionally the longer debate speeches are delivered too rapidly. John Howard's Galileo is a bit slow to develop his full character — this perhaps the result of David Hare's (or Wherrett's) choice of what to include and omit from Brecht's original. And the presence of a laptop computer on Galileo's desk throughout is simply bizarre. But none of this really gets in the way of stimulating and challenging theatre. Not to be missed.