Theater Review - What goes up ...

Whenever you see a show that conspicuously nods to its audience or its own artifice, you can credit Bertolt Brecht. The German playwright advanced the idea of breaking down the “fourth wall” of the theatrical set, an approach that would inspire such diverse artists as Ernie Kovacs, Monty Python and Jean-Luc Godard. The underpinning theories can be involved, but it always struck me that Brecht’s means to emphasize his ideas about class and society were meant for the whole world, not just a stage.

Brecht was as impatient with Aristotle’s views on dramatic unities as Galileo was with Aristotelian astronomy, so it fits that the playwright would dramatize the great astronomer’s life. Putting aside the Bard for Brecht, the New American Shakespeare Tavern offers a revival of Galileo from its 1998 repertory production. As a spectacle of the battle between integrity and the status quo, the Tavern’s Galileo can be sporadically effective, but also repetitious and drawn out.

Brecht’s Galileo Galilei (Shakespeare Tavern artistic director Jeffrey Watkins) comes across as much a struggling artist as a scientific genius. He pursues wealthy patrons and gets into the telescopy business mostly to pay his bills. But his commitment to scientific knowledge is unquestioned, and in the play’s “Eureka!” moment, he reveals to his assistant (Marc McPherson) the previously undiscovered moons of Jupiter through a telescope.

The Tavern production, directed by Dikran Tulaine, brings out the play’s allegorical aspects. Galileo argues his case, that the Earth is not the center of the universe, to numerous characters who represent specific points of view. Some of these scenes can make engrossing confrontations, as when he pointedly swaps proverbs with the politically canny Cardinal Barberini (Tony Brown, fittingly Machiavellian) or justifies his pursuit of truth to Fulganzio (Neil Necastro), a humble monk who fears the findings will disillusion the humble peasantry.

But the approach also makes Galileo feel like a one-note show, and some performances, like Doug Kaye’s lisping mathematician, aren’t so much emblematic as cartoonish. As Galileo’s most idealistic assistant, Mary Claire Dunn seems to view the role as a free-spirited life force or some kind of comic showcase, as she strikes odd poses and makes huge gestures out of place with the rest of the cast. Other players show the passion in the material by bellowing at the top of their lungs or standing on furniture.

The play isn’t great history: Galileo’s daughter (subject of a recent bestseller of the same name) was a nun, not a marriageable young woman (Jennifer Akin). But Brecht does justice to the circumstances that led to Galileo’s persecution. When he published a study in 1632, it was a grievous miscalculation, as he believed that Barberini’s elevation to Pope heralded a more tolerant climate. Instead, the Inquisition made an example of his heresy, forcing his public recantation.

Watkins conveys Galileo’s cantankerous manner and impatience with fools. But he doesn’t really give the role the earthy, multi-dimensional zest suggested by a line like, “He cannot say no to an old wine or a new thought.” Maurice Ralston has a funny turn as a doddering cardinal and a sinister one as the chief inquisitor, and it’s a disappointment that we don’t see his character confront Galileo more directly.

As with many Brecht plays, music runs through the show, which the Tavern interprets rather like a protest gathering of 1960s hippies. As the play’s chorus, Stuart McDaniel croons and plays acoustic guitar like an earnest folk singer. The second act begins with a seemingly endless, hand-clapping, tambourine-shaking number with the refrain “Independent spirit spreads like foul diseases!”

In the final scene we see Galileo judging himself harshly for recanting his discoveries, which appears to be Brecht’s own view. (Ironically, Brecht was no model of public defiance, having given evidence to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.) Brecht’s Galileo still proves a relevant cautionary tale of a martyr to the cause of truth, and one appreciates the Shakespeare Tavern’s eagerness in staging such a knotty work, but neither Brecht nor the Tavern quite capture the gravity of Galileo’s situation.

Galileo plays through April 29 at the New American Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree St., with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. $19.50-$24.50. 404-874-5299.??