The sun is shining on a bopping Galileo . . .
DIRECTOR Joe Wright is best known for his Keira Knightley films Atonement, Pride And Prejudice and Anna Karenina.
Here, though, Wright drops in on London’s hippest theatre to direct a hefty production of Bertolt Brecht’s play about the Renaissance astronomer who challenged 17th-century papal authority by proving the Earth orbited the Sun.
Designer Lizzie Clachan turns the theatre into a planetarium, the ceiling converted to a celestial dome, with wheeling animations of the cosmos.
Add to this some comically bombastic Close Encounters moments — with moving rigs, blinding lights, dry ice and masonry shaking music when we meet the Pope — and it’s a coup de theatre on steroids.
Aussie actor Brendan Cowell is a perfect fit for Galileo: a corpulent beardie torn between his appetites and his intellect.
There is something of the modern-day kidult about him here, with his trainers, black jeans, solar system T-shirt and aviator shades.
Paul Hunter adds lighter touches as one of Galileo’s excitable disciples — and later as a creepy inquisitor all too reminiscent of Peter Mandelson.
Billy Howle threatens to burst a blood vessel as Galileo’s protege, furious at his master for selling out, and one of the most memorable moments comes courtesy of Brian Pettifer, as the pot-bellied pontiff.
Over the course of three hours, I could have done with more nuance, but it’s still a bold collective effort that does, now and then, make the Earth move.