Good @ Harold Pinter Theatre... Review ->

Last Saturday night Roger and I went to see C P Taylor's frankly traumatic play Good at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

 

Good has been described as the definitive piece written about the Holocaust in the English-speaking theatre. Set in 1933 pre-war Germany, it shows how John Halder, a liberal-minded professor whose best friend is the Jewish Maurice, could not only be seduced into joining the Nazism, but step-by-rationalised-step ends up embracing the final solution justifying to his conscience the terrible actions.

 

David Tennant is outstanding as Halder, as are all the other roles - played by Elliot Levey and Sharon Small.

 

It is a really shocking piece. Not so much as to what you see on stage but the journey that the 'good' man takes. Repeatedly as he descends the moral ladder from decent, intelligent, music-loving German professor to fully paid-up member of the SS he stops and considers what he is doing. At every stage he thinks himself as being 'good'.

 

As the play progresses a sense of dread floods the auditorium as our ‘hero’ finds himself swept along in a movement that crescendos towards an unthinkable finale. 

 

Good is a play more about the causes rather than the consequences of Nazism - about morality and seduction. And if for no other reason alone, that makes Good an outstanding play. And truely a warning for our times.