New Scientist – June 10 2017

CULTURE
Keep it real
Is a pumped-up version of Brecht’s Galileo right for today, asks Shaoni Bhattacharya
LifeofGalileo, the Young Vic,
London, to 1 July
A sun-centred solar system upset
old mechanisms of social control
FLASHY, fun, comedic. Not the
normal epithets given to a play
by agitprop master Bertolt Brecht.
Nor indeed to the story of
astronomer Galileo Galilei, who
narrowly escaped being burned
for heresy by the Catholic church
in the early 17th century.
But this is director Joe Wright,
and he has scattered some of his
A-list film glitter (Atonement
and upcoming Churchill biopic
Darkest Hour) over the Young Vic’s
Life of Galileo – that and a large
helping of The Chemical Brothers.
Wright has created a giant
planetarium with circular chillout
zone in the centre, girdled by
a wooden gangway of a stage and
flanked by the audience. The set,
a clever echo of circular orbits,
also resembles a ship’s deck, with
staircase and scaffold-like rigging
to one side and two mini platform
stages at opposite ends like ships’
bridges. Above, stars shine in
the planetarium’s dome. The
projections (using NASA and
European Space Agency images)
are worth the ticket price alone.
The entire set is a physical
embodiment of the inextricable
link between the stars and
navigation, and voyages of
discovery of every sort.
Random people (actors and
audience members) loaf on
cushions in the chill-out zone.
On one platform, a scruffy,
slightly paunchy bloke in jeans,
T-shirt and New Balance trainers
fist-pumps enthusiastically to
the visceral trance beats.
Is this beardy, beefy, middleaged
raver meant to be Galileo?
Indeed he is: Australian actor
Brendan Cowell, an exuberant,
earthy Galileo, is at times more
1990s MC than tortured scientist.
There are real belly laughs when
Copernicus (Kippernikus in this
translation) gives Wright licence
for a Carry On-style “copper
knickers” joke. And you guffaw
when the aides of a supposedly
science-friendly new pope pull a
ripped torso over his pudgy body.
But I did begin to crave a deeper
tone. That comes in the second
half with supporting actors such
as Billy Howle (Andrea, son of
Galileo’s housekeeper – and his
protégé) deeply convincing as
they tackle the play’s emotional
heart. With Cowell, it proves hard
to get past his cocky, swaggering
Galileo to the real angst.
Galileo was an obvious choice
for Brecht. In 1543, Nicolaus
Copernicus had proposed a solar
system with the sun at its centre,
“The power of science,
truth, social responsibility
are more relevant when
facts can be dismissed”
upsetting 2000 years of belief
and challenging the very idea
of heaven. Some 70 years later,
Galileo’s telescope provided
evidence to back Copernicus by
observing the movements of the
planets and the changing light
JOHAN PERSSON
and faces of our moon, and
discovering the moons of Jupiter.
This threatened not only the
church, but also the status quo.
With no heaven, there might be
no God. What would stop the poor
revolting? As Brecht’s Galileo says,
forget “divine poverty”, what
about “divine anger”? Eventually,
to his followers’ dismay and with
the inquisitor upon him, Galileo
recanted and lived out his life
under house arrest in Florence.
Brecht wrote Galileo in 1938,
after fleeing the Nazis. Some years
later, he revised it in the light of
the Manhattan Project and the
first nuclear bombs. The soulsearching
of those times is riven
deep through the work’s complex
interplay of science, politics and
what it is to reason and be human.
Near the end of the play, Galileo
hands Andrea his book Discourses
to smuggle across the border.
As Galileo talks about being true to
science and how that may conflict
with the world, he says: “Your cry
of achievement will be echoed as
a universal cry of horror.”
That conflict – the tantalisingly
transformative power of science
running alongside its unknown,
maybe harmful effects – has only
intensified as technologies such
as genome editing and AI emerge.
And the power of science, truth
and social responsibility running
throughout Galileo are even more
relevant at a time when facts and
evidence can be lightly dismissed.
Does this version lighten Brecht
too much? Whatever. Put on your
New Balances, enjoy the rave, the
stars and the ideas. What the show
may lose in gravitas, it makes up
for in sheer exuberance. ■
Shaoni Bhattacharya is a consultant
for New Scientist
46 | NewScientist | 10 June 2017