Memorable performance in prescient masterpiece at Stratford theatre

Resist as he might, Brecht’s irascible old scientist cannot escape the fact that science is not a neutral pursuit. In Galileo’s day it was the Roman Catholic Church that had control of the message and thus the uses to which science should be put. In Brecht’s day, it was the governments of America and the Soviet Union who used the knowledge produced by science to produce the atom bomb. Galileo capitulates in the face of torture, recanting his discoveries and living on to old age, a prophet, so to speak, without honour in his own land, but elsewhere revered.

Ian McDairmid’s performance as Galileo will go down as one of the greats seen on the RSC stage. He is skittish, short-tempered, shrewd and naive at the same time. He is indifferent to the fate of those associated with him. History shows the hero to be hard to define. Was his capitulation a simple reaction to the threat of torture, or a calculated move to allow him to continue his work in secret? You decide.

When Brecht heard that scientists had helped develop the atom bomb, he was appalled but not surprised. In the USA today, the doctrines of creationism are held by some with power as truth. Brecht’s play is as prescient now as it was when it was first produced, and when Galileo first looked at the stars through a telescope.

Nick Le Mesurier