Galileo

The very idea of the Charles Playhouse staging Brecht's magnum opus, Galileo, might draw a gasp of astonishment. The play requires elaborate production, many large and varied sets, a cast of fifty; and the script makes enormous demands of the actors. But with the help of Tony van Bridge, a fine Shakespearean actor imported from Canada to play Galileo, the Charles production remains competent throughout and occasionally flashes through to brilliance.

Brecht may have set his play in the seventeenth century, but Galileo's persecution at the hands of the Church remains a thin disguise for Brecht's critique of the Nazis.

After the war and Hiroshima, Brecht revised the play to include the problem of the scientist knowing sin. Brecht also began to portray the great physicist as the great proletarian who unwittingly becomes the leader of the masses. Galileo thus turned into a catch all for Brecht's most important thought during the war years. The result is staggering.

Brecht divided Galileo into fourteen scenes, beginning with the man's first tinkerings with astronomy and ending with his completion of the Discorsi shortly before his death. The patchwork construction is meant to distract you from emotional involvement lest you miss the lesson of each scene. Happily, Brecht's design falls through, and tension does build.

Galileo emerges as a hero as he defies the authorities and continues his work, until he is finally brought before the Inquisition. At that point, a messenger announces to his disciples that the bell of St. Mark's will ring at five o'clock sharp to signify that at five, the young scientists rejoice. But Brecht has the bell ring at 5:03 to simultaneously shatter their illusions and to show us how even super-men can be late. Thus Brecht toys with the tension build-up to make Galileo as much an anti-hero as he can.

Michael Murray, the director, has chosen to emphasize the dramatic aspects of the play often at the expense of the Brechtian irony. The dialogue, for example, is often spoken with passion rather than with detachment. His stage, however, is far too small for the pageantry scenes, and Murray has made no attempt to enlarge it with devices. As a result, Brecht's intended contrast between the large and the intimate scenes often gets muddled.

Brecht drew his Galileo as a big belching proletarian who would belch even in the Pope's presence. Tony van Bridge seems far too well-mannered with the Establishment, but among his scientist friends he back-slaps sufficiently. He brings extreme power to the role, perhaps too much. The rest of the Charles cast rarely reaches his heights or depths. Lynn Milgrim provides the one exception with her brilliant performance as Galileo's light-hearted daughter who changes into a madonna-like grey-haired spinster.

Lawrence Pressman also does well as the disciple, Andrea Sarti. Brecht intended Galileo's little band to resemble a revolutionary conspiracy of sorts, and Mr. Pressman often seems the reincarnation of the young Trotsky. His scene with the dying Galileo at the very end of the play is appropriately the high point of the evening.

Despite some shortcoming in the remainder of the huge cast, Michael Murray's production holds up well. No thanks to the worthless Gregorian chant which Murray has inserted between scencs, the play maintains a solid continuity which should appeal to any kind of audience. And with the help of Tony van Bridge, the fire is there -- the play often wraps and wiggles with the power of a python. The Charles, in short, deserves a medal both for its courage in attempting Galileo and for its large measure of success in setting off so many of the depth charges which Brecht placed in this play.