Plaque Book Burning - Frankfurt am Main - TracesOfWar.com". en.tracesofwar.com . Retrieved 29 June 2018.

Good is a 2008 drama film based on the stage play of the same name by Cecil Philip Taylor. It stars Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, and Jodie Whittaker, and was directed by Vicente Amorim. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2008.

Havant's Bench Theatre has taken on the challenge of this thoughtful play. There were signs of hesitation and unease among some of the principal actors, but Halder who is almost constantly on stage, is a perfect vehicle for David Penrose. His total confidence and talent for irony make it all fall into place. The set ingeniously gets round the limitations of the Old Town Hall space in accommodating a sizable cast, instant switches of scene, and five onstage musicians who punctuate the action with ironic musical footnotes. Good starring David Tennant to run in the West End this autumn | WhatsOnStage". www.whatsonstage.com . Retrieved 26 May 2022. Genuinely not wishing to be glib about it, but there is something fascinating about the way in which David Tennant has devoted so much of his post-‘Doctor Who’ career to exploring different aspects of human evil. From terrifying Marvel villain Kilgrave to serial killer Dennis Nilsen and his recent turn as a toxic vicar in ‘Inside Man’, at this stage it’s difficult to imagine this is simply him trying to avoid typecasting. 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. 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.

Halder’s best friend, a Jewish psychologist called Maurice (Jason Isaacs) who fought alongside him in World War I, voices his concerns about Halder’s choices. As it becomes more dangerous for Jews in Germany, Maurice approaches Halder to gain exit papers, but Halder is unwilling to risk his own standing and status to help save his best friend.Everyman Theatre Cardiff present 'Good' by CP Taylor". Theatre Wales. 31 October 2011 . Retrieved 11 May 2012. Good, Burning Coal Theatre Company at the Murphey School". Indy Week. 6 February 2013 . Retrieved 17 February 2013. Four decades on and some of it feels a bit unsubtle, especially a strand that ties the fictional John directly to the real Final Solution. It’s also a slightly messy play: having the three actors constantly switching between roles – often mid-dialogue – feels endlessly fiddly, especially early on. The undercooked second act lets the first down. The narrative is uneven, skipping directly from the Night of the Long Knives (1934) to the Night of Broken Glass (1938) to Eichmann and the Final Solution (1944), as if the script is a set of flashcards a GCSE student is using to revise. The point of the action also becomes muddled: is it meant to be about one man’s seduction to the dark side? Or how people who seem incredibly well-meaning can justify any action to themselves, even objectively evil ones? In 1998, it secured joint 85th place in the Royal National Theatre's Survey of the "Most Significant Plays of the 20th Century". [7] A year later, Michael Grandage directed in its original theatre a new successful play in two acts, with Charles Dance playing John Halder, Ian Gelder as Maurice, and Faith Brook as Halder's mother. [8] The London Evening Standard described the event "one of the most powerful, politically pointed nights at the theatre." [4]

It’s not so much a play about the banality of evil – that old cliche– as the apathy of evil, the hypocrisy of evil. The title refers to the fact John is a ‘good’ man… but is he? In Tennant’s portrayal there’s always a hole where there should be a conscience. His John drifts through life unbothered about cheating on Anne, unsympathetic to his ailing mother: he even writes a novel in which he essentially fantasises about having her euthanised. He complains to Mauricethat he always hears distracting music in his head when he should be engaging with other people. 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. Good is a play in two acts, written by British playwright Cecil Philip Taylor. First published for Methuen Drama in 1982, it was originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1981 and was subsequently seen all over the world. [1] Good has been described as the definitive piece written about the Holocaust in the English-speaking theatre. [2] Set in pre-war Germany, it shows how John Halder, a liberal-minded professor whose best friend is the Jewish Maurice, could not only be seduced into joining the Nazis, but step-by-rationalised-step end up embracing the Final Solution, justifying to his conscience the terrible actions involved. [3] Plot overview [ edit ] You find somebody you love... and you have a family and look after them... and try and not harm anybody... Isn't that what happens? In the end you have to survive. And the less you harm people in surviving..."Intro) "The writing of this play is my response to a deeply felt, and deeply experienced, trauma [...] as well as the intellectual awareness, not at all deeply felt, of my role as the 'Peace Criminal' in the Peace 'Crimes' of the current West against the Third World-- my part in the Auschwitzes we are all perpetrating today."

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. In 2003, 22 years after the play's premiere, Miriam finally secured the rights. Her former classmate, Jason Isaacs, signed on to be one of the film’s executive producers, and Viggo Mortensen, who had been very impressed by the play when visiting London as a young actor in 1981, agreed to play the lead. The film was shot entirely on location in Budapest in 2007. 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. As John indifferently drifts into the upper echelons of the Third Reich, his moral vacuumbecomes a protective cushion. He doesn’t mind burning books so long as he keeps his own private copies of them, something his new, jazz-loving SS pal Freddie is totally fine with. 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:

Reviews

But the pacing is excellent. The dialogue is perfect. I’m a big lover of modern dialect in a historical setting. And the character, and his moral dilemmas. Unnerving. Awful. Encapsulating. The play has been performed by many regional theatre companies, including the Havant Arts Centre in 1986, [9] the North Wall Arts Centre in 2008, [10] the Hilberry Theater in 2010, [11] the Royal Exchange Theatre, [12] Everyman Theatre, Cardiff in 2011, [13] and the Burning Coal Theatre Company in 2013. [14] Edith Stein - a victim of the Holocaust who was murdered at Auschwitz, fellow protégée with Heidegger of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl