David Tennant as John Halder
in Good at the Harold Pinter Theatre
London 2022.
Photo by Johan Persson
056 – Good, by C.P. Taylor
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John Halder is a professor of literature at Frankfurt University. He is a cultured and caring man, who is married with two children, and who looks after his mother who suffers from dementia. He lives in dramatic times, because this is 1933, and Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists have come to power in Germany. The professor finds himself drawn into joining the Nazi elite as they pursue their terrible political and cultural agenda. His story is played out in C.P. Taylor’s disturbing, cautionary play, Good, which charts how an ostensibly ‘good’ person can become not just complicit to evil behaviour, but an active participant. The way in which an ordinary individual is caught up in a populist crusade speaks strongly to the dangers of our own time, where pernicious views and misinformation are so easily disseminated.
Good was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse in September 1981. As we record this episode a new production of Good is currently running at the Harold Pinter theatre in London’s West End, directed by Dominic Cooke and starring David Tennant as John Halder. I’m hugely honoured to have the opportunity to talk with director Dominic Cooke about this original and powerful play, and his new production.
Dominic Cooke
Dominic Cooke is an acclaimed director of stage and acreen. He was the Artistic Director of the Royal Court theatre from 2006 to 2013, where he presided over a exhilaratingly creative period which included premieres of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, Lucy Prebble’s Enron, and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park to name just a few favourites.
He is an Associate Director of the National Theatre, where his acclaimed productions have included Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies in 2017, which was nominated for no fewer than 10 Olivier awards, and more recently Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green.
Dominic is also a writer and director for TV and film, having adapted and directed the BBC series of Shakespeare’s The Hollow Crown – The Wars of the Roses, as well as directed the films On Chesil Beach and The Courier, and he is next due to direct a film version of Follies.
Recommended Play
Dominic recommended The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare.
The Footnotes to our episode on C.P.Taylor’s Good include observations on Halder’s solipsism, his shameful betrayal of his friend Maurice, and how individual moral paralysis writ large can sanction a political crusade.
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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
I watch the play with my daughter, got to say it’s certainly though provoking. The cast were absolutely brilliant never left the stage but took on different caractors with out cloths changes but you instantly knew what character they were playing , David Tennant was spellbinding, he should have got a Olivier award he was outstanding.