Good is playing until January 31 at The Mary Wallace Theatre, The Embankment, Twickenham.
“A thought-provoking, intense and sadly, timely play”
OUR VERDICT
Mary Wallace
What convinces a ‘good’ man to make a deal with the devil? This is the question examined to great effect in this production of CP Taylor’s play “Good”, at the Mary Wallace Theatre in Twickenham until January 31st.
Directed by Clare Cooper and performed by the Richmond Shakespeare Society, “Good”, written in 1981, looks at the life of a liberal Professor of literature from Frankfurt, John Halder.
Although a seemingly ‘good’ man occupied with a depressed wife, three children and a mother with dementia, over the course of eight years, we watch as he is readily seduced by the Nazis, rising through the ranks of the party, eventually joining the SS and becoming complicit in their Final Solution at Auschwitz.
Music is a constant for Halder – earworms that he can’t ever get rid of, accompanying every thought he has – and Cooper cleverly sets the drama in a 1930s-night club, complete with singers and a brilliant quartet.
Mary Wallace
The play switches deftly between Halder’s internal and external life. One minute (to music), he’s justifying taking part in book burning ceremonies and Kristallnacht (where Jewish people, businesses and homes were attacked and destroyed), the next he’s in the arms of an adoring and much younger student or meeting a Jewish friend, Maurice, to explain why he can’t help him escape from the Nazis.
Peter Hill plays Halder, and it’s an extraordinary performance.
Never off stage and with thousands of lines to deliver, he’s entirely convincing as a shallow, selfish and ultimately cruel man who abandons, betrays and murders.
Mary Wallace
Moving between scenes at lightning speed, he deserved so much more than the polite round of applause the play received on opening night.
As does the ensemble cast, all of whom make the most of their small amounts of time on stage, particularly Sue Reach, who gives a sympathetic performance as Halder’s depressed and anxious wife, Helen, who tries to cling on to her husband; and Fran Billington, who is both moving and comic as Halder’s frightened and demanding mother.
But it’s Marco Liviero, as Halder’s Jewish friend Maurice, who delivers the stand-out performance of the supporting case.
Part conscience, part irritant to Halder, it’s impossible to look away from Maurice as he implores his friend to help him and his family escape to Switzerland.
Mary Wallace
Liviero’s performance moves from energetic denial (that there is a problem) to an inevitable stillness as he begins to understand the fate that awaits him.
I would have liked to have seen a bit more of Halder before his rapid allegiance to the Nazis – he’s not ever present on stage as an entirely ‘good’ man – but this doesn’t detract much at all from what is a thought-provoking, intense and, sadly, timely play.
If you’re lucky enough to get tickets, don’t be shy about giving the actors and musicians the rousing applause they deserve. This play is not to be missed.
Tickets: richmondshakespeare.org.uk
