FOUR STARS

 

The revival under director Roxana Silbert of A Life of Galileo at Stratford could hardly be more timely in a week that has seen the epoch-making resignation of a Pope. Widely considered Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece, the play focuses on its hero’s clash with papal authority over the movement of the planets.

Observation through his telescope by the great Italian scientist — brilliantly, and endearingly, played here by Ian McDiarmid — helped him prove that Earth was not the fixed and stable centre of the Universe but one of many planets orbiting the Sun.

This heretical notion did not go down well with the church. Pacing the stage, Patrick Romer’s Old Cardinal fulminates (in translator Mark Ravenhill’s sinuous language): “I walk on solid earth with a firm step . . . I am the centre, and the eye of the creator rests on me and me alone.”

Soon Galileo is falling foul of the Cardinal Inquisitor, portrayed by the excellent Martin Turner who, somewhat confusingly, also plays Galileo’s friend Sagredo. Cardinal Barberini (Philip Whitchurch) is another ally but, once he accedes to the Papal throne as Urban VIII, needs to be more pragmatic. Having first told the Inquisitor “I won’t say 2 x 2 = 5. No!”, he eventually concedes that a sight of the torture instruments might perhaps persuade Galileo that it does.

His recantation, as presented in Brecht’s original version of 1937, was a ploy designed to buy time for further scientific writing. This assuredly was carried out, during Galileo’s house arrest under the church’s watchful eye and in the tender care of his daughter Virginia (Jodie McNee). But a later rewrite of the play, post Hiroshima, takes a more jaundiced view of science. “All we’ve got is a race of inventing pygmies,” Galileo tells his one-time disciple Andrea (Matthew Aubrey), “who can be sold to the highest bidder.”

This is a fine production of a remarkable play in which music (Nick Powell) and carnival capers assist in supplying authentic Brechtian style.

Swan Theatre, Stratford Until March 30 Tickets: 0844 800 1110 www.rsc.org.uk