Good (Modern Plays): A Tragedy

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Some of my best friends are Jewish but... six million of them still ended up in the gas chambers. C P Taylor's 'Good' shows how a decent, intelligent man whose best friend is a Jew could not only be seduced into joining the Nazis, but justify to his conscience the terrible actions which his position as an SS Officer demands. If ever there were a dire warning to woolly liberals, this is it - for Professor John Halder's agile intellect and his capacity to see the good in everyone are his own undoing. He wouldn’t sign my diary. Is it because it means I may not have seen the show, I may not be supporting the theatre; that it’s more likely to be sold on blank lined paper; or that I would put a contrary manifesto atop it and play it off as words blessed by him? That was tragic. It distracted me from the ‘Good’ play and its details. St. Louis News and Events | Riverfront Times". www.riverfronttimes.com. Archived from the original on 1 February 2013 . Retrieved 27 January 2022. The masterstroke of Taylor’s play is that instead of separating people into good and bad, heroes and villains, he shows the potential in a seemingly decent man for corruption. The Nazi Party spies the moral flaws, like vanity and detachment, in Halder, and they exploit those qualities, until Halder is at a point where he is committing atrocities but intellectually rationalising them. Yet he doesn’t seem like a monster when we meet him.

Everyman Theatre Cardiff present 'Good' by CP Taylor". Theatre Wales. 31 October 2011 . Retrieved 11 May 2012. Good starring David Tennant announces new West End venue and 2021 dates | WhatsOnStage". www.whatsonstage.com . Retrieved 14 September 2020.One of the most eye-catching West End openings this winter is the much-anticipated revival of CP Taylor’s play Good, starring David Tennant. Running at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre, the show asks what makes a “good” man, and how that might change in the face of survival – or temptation. Set in 1930s Germany, it’s a highly charged political piece that should land with renewed force today. The good of the title, is not, as we assume, referring to a good man turned bad, but a man who turns bad because he serves his own good above all else. “If I am not for myself, then who is for me?” he says, perversely quoting a line from the Talmud. It is this that fuels the creep towards dead-eyed evil. A story about a liberal-minded university professor who drifts well-meaningly into a position in the upper reaches of the Nazi administration, Good is a profound and alarming examination of passivity and the rationalisation of evil. The premiere production had a huge impact, and went on to play at the RSC’s home in Stratford and then on tour, plus it transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in the West End. It then became a celebrated play internationally, including a hit run on Broadway. Good has continued to be staged over the years, and was also adapted into a movie in 2008 starring Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs and Jodie Whittaker. best plays of the Century". National Theatre. Archived from the original on 10 May 2012 . Retrieved 11 May 2012.

It follows John Halder (Tennant), a liberal German professor with a Jewish best friend – Elliott Levey’s Maurice – and a fragile wife – Sharon Small’s Anne – plus sundry extra characters played by Levey and Small. The action begins in Frankfurt, 1933, as John and Maurice try to convince each other that Nazi antisemitism will burn itself out soon. Maurice is scared; John simply finds it illogical. Here’s our guide to what makes this such an impactful play, its history, and what we can expect from this run of Good with David Tennant. It’s depressingly easy to see why Cooke would want to revive Good now - the number of antisemitic incidents reported in the UK reached an all-time high in 2021, undoubtedly fuelled by the rise of far-right internet groups luring in supporters through memes and so-called edgy humour. Killing Jewish people is obviously a bad thing, Halder says to us in the aftermath of the Night of Broken Glass. But Taylor doesn’t make enough of these asides for us to have any real connection with Halder. We’re given nothing to latch on to.Taylor doesn’t seem to know what to do with his female characters, either. Helen is comically useless, soon replaced by Anne, one of Halder’s students, who has no personality beyond an alleged disinterest in politics. The fact that they are both played, however sympathetically, by Small doesn’t help to flesh them out. Halder grows so frustrated by his elderly mother (also Small), who is blind and has dementia, that he helps devise the Nazis’ euthanasia programme for the disabled. His focus is, as ever, on himself: he says that there should be an end to the “pain” families have experienced caring for their disabled relatives. And what of the disabled people themselves?

In his director's note, Frank Lyons draws a moral parallel with issues of today - namely Apartheid and 'the final solution - a nuclear holocaust. But the real irony of a play like 'Good' is that the author had the benefit of hindsight, while the Halders of today do not.It has to be said however, simply reading the piece isn’t enough. There is so much music that is key to the play that, to read a title and artist without knowing the tune, none of which I did, dilutes Taylor’s efforts. But it is a script at the end of the day so reading will only take you so far.

Producer Miriam Segal had wanted to turn C. P. Taylor's play into a film ever since she saw it in 1981. Good premiered in London in September 1981, with Alan Howard as John Halder, and transferred to Broadway in 1982. "I was simply overwhelmed by the play, and knew immediately I would do whatever was necessary to produce the film adaptation", Segal has stated. Good has been heading towards one conclusion, the same one the real-life historical events did. But the realities of history don’t always make for great drama. Taylor wrote a brilliant one-act play –if only he’d quit while he was ahead. Good, Burning Coal Theatre Company at the Murphey School". Indy Week. 6 February 2013 . Retrieved 17 February 2013.John Halder is a Frankfurt literary professor and an example of the good man: he is apparently devoted to his wife and children and he does his best to look after his aged mother. He even tells his best friend, a Jewish psychiatrist, that the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists is "just a balloon they throw up in the air to distract the masses." But this is Germany in 1933, and men can change. Cecil P. Taylor, in tracing his hero's progress over eight years towards the upper echelons of the SS, plausibly explains the private flaws that lead to endorsement of public monstrosity. Beneath Halder's surface 'goodness' lies a chilling moral detachment: he can abandon his distracted wife for a devoted student, he has written a pro-euthanasia novel, he hears in his head a continuous musical score that helps blot out daily reality. Taylor's point is that Nazism preyed on individual character flaws and on a missing moral dimension in otherwise educated and intelligent people. At first Halder believes he can help 'push the Nazis towards humanity'. Slowly he succumbs to vanity, careerism and the desire for an easy life. Above all, he remains curiously detached from reality. [4] At the end Halder not only becomes a member of the Nazi party but also plays a direct role in SS book burnings, in euthanasia experiments, in the night of the Broken Glass, and, finally, in Adolf Eichmann's genocide at Auschwitz, where Maurice, the sole source of a Jewish perspective in the play and original force of "good" in Halder, ends up being deported. Hibbs, James (16 November 2022). "David Tennant's play Good to be broadcast to cinemas in UK and worldwide". Radio Times . Retrieved 25 June 2023. Listen... What it could be... Is nothing I touch real? ... Is it? My whole life like that... I do everything, more or less, that everybody else does... But I don't feel it's real. Like other people. On the other hand, it could be other people feel the same thing." The play commences in January 1933. It was in January of that year that Hitler took office. Other historical moments referred to in the play are included: Find sources: "C. P. Taylor"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( January 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)