London is currently experiencing a mini festival of immersive productions of Bertolt Brecht plays. Hot on the heels of the recently opened revival of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, which transforms the Donmar Warehouse into a 1930s Chicago speakeasy and at times conscripts the audience into the action, the Young Vic now stages Life of Galileo as a kind of planetarium installation, with a vast white dome dominating a space that has the audience wrapped around the entirety of... Read more
Galileo Galilei: father, hero, heretic. When a chance discovery leads to evidence of a seismic shift in scientific thinking, Galileo sparks a dangerous dispute with authority. To challenge the idea that the earth is the centre of the universe is to challenge the all-powerful Roman Catholic Church. Brecht’s dramatisation of the battle between belief and reason considers whether proof matters when it inspires dissent. Joe Wright catapults Life of Galileo into the Young Vic’s Main House auditorium as you’ve never seen it before with design by Lizzie Clachan and video design by 59 Productions.