This absorbing three hour production worked for me on a number of levels:
1. The creative and high energy production by Joe Wright. Notable features were: a) having it in the round with a circuit enclosing audience members in a pit into which the actors moved b) the projection above the stage of the sky, the Vatican etc c) the music of Chemical Brothers d) the informal interaction between the actors and audience particularly before the start and after the interval - no doubt a Brechtian feature but also extremely well interpreted and executed by this team.
2. The play itself is a fascinating account of Galileo's scientific enquiry and the battle he faced with the church. It has many telling thought-provoking lines, notably on the presumed need by 'the masses' for certainty and the sense of let-down by Galileo's students when he capitulated to Vatican pressure. Also causing the audience to draw breath was the notion that scientific and technological discoveries would become another means of tyranny.
3. The acting and particularly the energy of Brendan Cowell was amazing.
All in all, a fantastic and memorable evening of theatre.
