If the skies had looked the way they do in Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo,” which just opened at Classic Stage Company, the famous Italian astronomer may never have looked up a telescope. It’s as if a giant mobile made up of brown, ugly Christmas ornaments hung over the stage. Occasional projections enliven those lumpy planets, but the drab set is in dire need of a Pink Floyd soundtrack.
Actually, Brian Kulick’s overly earnest production could use some Red Bull: It’s packed with challenging ideas but punches like a kitten wearing boxing gloves.
F. Murray Abraham is perfectly fine as Galileo, of course, but the actor known for intense, outsize performances — Salieri in the “Amadeus” movie, and an excellent Shylock in a recent “Merchant of Venice” — keeps things in dignified check here.
This approach saps the energy out of the play, which tracks the struggle between the famed Italian scientist and the Catholic Church in the early 17th century.
Inconveniently for religious authorities, which preached that the sun revolves around the Earth, Galileo discovered it was the reverse.
“Where is God in your system of the universe?” asks his concerned friend Sagredo (Steven Skybell).
“Within ourselves,” Galileo answers. “Or — nowhere.”
You can see why the Church would want to keep this on the QT.
But Brecht doesn’t really get into point/counterpoint arguments — even if the show offers enough prescient parallels with our “faith vs. science” debates around global warming and evolution to provoke knowing chuckles.
Director Kulick uses a version of the text written right after WWII by Brecht and an unlikely collaborator: “Mutiny on the Bounty” star Charles Laughton. Two things were on the playwright’s mind then: his appearance in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Hiroshima, which raised the issue of scientists’ responsibilities.
Hounded by the Inquisition, Galileo recants at the mere sight of torture instruments. Under house arrest, he continues his research in secret, but plays it safe to save his skin.
This is a provocative ending for modern audiences, who like their whistle-blowers defiant. Too bad this deferential production is unwilling to equally send us into a spin.