Trap Door’s “Galileo,” with David Lovejoy/Photo: J. Michael Griggs
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When audience members enter the Trap Door Theatre for Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo,” they see a nearly naked man, sitting on a chair with his face to the wall.
They learn that the man is the scientist Galileo Galilei, played by Trap Door artistic producer David Lovejoy. Galileo’s nakedness represents his real self—a visionary who tells uncomfortable truths. As he makes compromises and literally contorts himself to please business and church leaders, clothing is added, to be taken off again when he returns to honesty.
It’s uncomfortable to be in a tiny theater with someone clad in just a narrow strip of cloth, and that’s as it should be. Galileo’s research, which upheld the Copernican theory that the Earth is not the center of the universe, made people uncomfortable. It took away their certainty that humanity is special in the eyes of God. In its unease with Galileo’s nakedness, the audience becomes complicit with the Inquisition—we want him to put clothes on and hide us from the truth.
Under resident director Max Truax, Trap Door offers a brilliant interpretation of this play—intelligent, gutsy and moving. Like other Trap Door productions, it is strange and surreal, with glowing television sets, the sounds of sitcom laughter, a woman in a blindfold and a backdrop made of sheets of dark paper covered with Galileo’s work. The scene design by Merje Veski, costumes by Rachel Sypniewski and sound by Dan Poppen help to create a feeling of both unreality and danger. But like the nakedness—the weirdness is not weird for its own sake but clarifies the play’s ideas about conformity and ignorance.
Trap Door’s “Galileo,” with Dan Cobbler, David Lovejoy and Genevieve Corkery/Photo: J. Michael Griggs
As Galileo, Lovejoy is passionate though not always likable—it’s hard to be the smartest guy in the room. Galileo is a flawed man, fond of his comforts. He can be cruel to his daughter Virginia (played with heartbreaking innocence by Genevieve Corkery) and dishonest in his business dealings. But he doesn’t deserve his fate. The play (translated by Charles Laughton) offers a parable about the role of scientific discovery in the world—if you’re going to offer something new, you’d better make it profitable, and you’d better not upset the people in charge.
The cast for the production is strong throughout, making this intellectual script lively and clear. The ensemble includes Dan Cobbler, who plays the Curator with a knowing, grinning cynicism—he’s a glad-handing populist who turns on Galileo when he fails to serve. Another standout is Amber Washington as a monk who accepts Galileo’s teachings. She gives a touching speech about how his views could unsettle the peasants, whose misery is relieved only by their faith.
Brecht wrote this play in 1938, five years after he fled Germany and the Nazis burned his books. His views on power are blunt—you can be clever, and you can be right, but even a brave man may surrender when shown the instruments of torture. “Galileo” is a reminder that in an autocracy, the truth is no defense.
“Galileo” runs through June 14 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 West Cortland. Tickets are $31 plus fees, available at trapdoortheatre.com.
