Simon Russell Beale "is the sun around which everything moves" in The Life of Galileo for the Independent's Paul Taylor and practically everyone else, although Howard Davies' production commanded less universal responses.
Charles Spencer of the Telegraph described the performance as one that encompassed "thrilling humanity, humour, intellect, passion and, ultimately, guilt and grief", and for Benedict Nightingale of the Times, "To hear this marvellous actor hawk up the words 'I have betrayed my profession' is like hearing Hippocrates confessing to infanticide."
But, while there wasn't a moment when Russell Beale wasn't superb, "the Earth juddered, but it didn't move" for the Observer's Susannah Clapp. "Howard Davies's modern-dress production floats the notion of 21st-century parallels (anyone for creationism?) without really making these illuminating," she complained.
Both the Times and Sunday Times had a far simpler problem: Brecht. As Christopher Hart put it for the latter paper, David Hare's interpretation was problematic, "with a lack of subtlety or shading that would embarrass Richard Dawkins". But for him, the greater crime was committed by its communist playwright, whose hypocrisy in challenging the totalitarian nature of the Inquisition was unacceptable.
And where the Telegraph loved the set, "an appropriately revolving design by Bunny Christie resembling an astronomical observatory", for Clapp, the "rentakit design does exactly what Brecht doesn't need: it underlines visually what he's on about".
Mark Brown of the Socialist Worker, meanwhile, felt a very different sort of grievance: "Once again Hare has foregrounded his own insipid theatrical tastes to the detriment of the great playwright he is adapting," he laments.
