Galileo
Opening Night: February 23, 2012
Closing: March 18, 2012
Theater: Classic Stage Comp.
"In the year sixteen hundred and nine, science’s light began to shine; Galileo Galilei set out to prove, the sun is still, the earth is on the move." So begins Bertolt Brecht’s masterful depiction of how the simplest of ideas can topple the most powerful of regimes. Join Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham as he adds Galileo to his gallery of indelible roles.
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February 23, 2012
Emerging from the chamber where he has been threatened with torture, the man before us seems to have withered into a sleep-walking wraith of his former, vigorous self. Shuffling forward with an unsteady gait, barefoot and listless, he stares emptily into the space before him. As awareness dawns of the presence of others in the room, he slowly brings his hands in front of him to hide the humiliating stain of moisture on his undergarments.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 23, 2012
If the skies had looked the way they do in Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo,” which just opened at Classic Stage Company, the famous Italian astronomer may never have looked up a telescope. It’s as if a giant mobile made up of brown, ugly Christmas ornaments hung over the stage. Occasional projections enliven those lumpy planets, but the drab set is in dire need of a Pink Floyd soundtrack.
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February 23, 2012
Outside the classroom, there are two ways to encounter the great, fading Bertolt Brecht: Either he’s aestheticized out of relevance, as Robert Wilson did with last year’s slick, all-attitude Threepenny Opera at BAM; or he’s rendered glumly earnest and didactic, which is the sin committed by Brian Kulick’s toothless Galileo at Classic Stage Company. Despite fiery flashes by F. Murray Abraham as the Italian astronomer who challenged Catholic dogma, this revival (which uses the 1947 adaptation by Charles Laughton) never sends us into the stratosphere of philosophical or political fervor. It remains earthbound, orbiting an nonthreatening notion of Galileo as an irascible but decent hero.
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February 23, 2012
Theatergoers arriving at Classic Stage Company’s new off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht’s "Galileo" might feel like they instead wandered into a space show at the Hayden Planetarium.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 23, 2012
In “Galileo,” the 17th-century Italian astronomer is described as “a man who cannot say no to old wine or a new idea.”
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