Good
Harold Pinter Theatre

IT’S Germany 1933; the Nazis have exploded into power; Jewish religious practices are outlawed and public conversation is peppered with anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Euthanasia for the infirm is openly discussed; Hitler’s cabinet have suspended the right to protest, and the world is about to be rocked to its foundations by one fanatical man and one uncompromising idea. What would you do if you were there?

CP Taylor’s Good tells of Halder: a clever, free-spirited, civilised, self-confessed liberal who sees himself as — yes — good. Caught up in the march of Nazism and living in Frankfurt, he turns to his own even-handed intelligence to make sense of the prevailing politics.

As the play unfolds, we see how a rational, well-meaning person can be seduced into — at best — folly and — at worst — a self-induced oblivion and denial of a shocking and degrading reality.

The play premiered in 1981 to world-wide acclaim. Times were different then and Nazism was widely regarded as an awful aberration from which we had all learnt and would continue to learn.

In 2022, Dominic Cooke’s superb new production lands in a different space. Now, the world is in turmoil and dangerous populist movements with crazy bids for power challenge our sanity. Suddenly, this timely revival of the play captures a new terror.

Reason, it shows us, is not after all our saviour. Madness can be vindicated if upheld by logic. And moral judgement can be swept away by a surge of eager argument. The current applicability of this work chills the blood.

David Tennant is simply magnificent as Halder. His slender frame emanates, variously: respectability and refinement, fragility, gentleness and kindness, and a sort of “I-wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly” reassurance. Only, when he dons that uniform — boy! — is he the stuff of nightmares!  

Throughout the drama, flaws in Halder’s make-up ripple to the surface, even as he basks in beautiful music or patiently eases his dementia-beset mother into a space she can recognise.

The word “love,” which he uses often, he intones on such a flat and expressionless note that it jars even as it hits the air, and every tilt of his head betrays his hollow centre. This is a performance of revelatory power … as are those of Elliot Levy and Sharon Small who play the range of remaining, vital parts.

As these two actors switch in a heartbeat from one to another of those who share Halder’s life, they exhibit not only a mesmerising acting masterclass but also the image of real people who fade in and out of Halder’s peripheral vision like dispensable adjuncts to his own clear mental path.

Even his wife sinks from high definition to annihilation as her place in his mind fades and his focus turns elsewhere.

Vicki Mortimer’s stark and disturbing set claws at the unconscious like an atrocity glimpsed but brushed away, and director Cooke steers us to a conclusion that lands like an axe in the head.

As Tennant quietly soars, this all-time classic lodges within us, never to let us go.

Runs until December 24 2922. Box office: 03330 096 690, www.atgtickets.com