Review: Raul Esparza is brilliant in ‘Galileo’; the rest of the show can’t keep up
Staring up at an inky black sky, Galileo is seduced by the mysteries of the cosmos.
Four-time Tony nominee Raúl Esparza (“Company”) mesmerizes as the maverick astronomer, a deeply religious man who hardens into atheism in “Galileo: A Rock Musical,” an erratic cautionary tale written by Emmy winner Danny Strong and directed by Tony winner Michael Mayer (“Spring Awakening,” “American Idiot”).
While the staging is shot through with explosive moments in its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the tragedy of the 17th-century polymath never catches fire in this sluggish three-hour-long production.
Part of the trouble is that Galileo is such an eccentric figure, a renegade genius written off as a failure in his own time, but the score here is thoroughly generic, the choreography spins its wheels and the book skims the surface of the characters. Only the stellar projections (by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras) are suitably imaginative.
Unlike Esparza’s dazzling performance, the music doesn’t seem to fit the man.
The other key flaw is that this musical reveals precious little we didn’t already know about the famous man of science. Where it could shed light on the darkness, it tends to gloss over the details, such as why Galileo gave his daughter to the church and exactly why his bosom friend the Bishop (a sensitive turn by Jeremy Kushnier) betrayed him after many years of loyalty.
As it is, the plot points lack urgency because we all already know the ending. Galileo’s fate is written in the stars when he is summoned to Rome to defend his heretical theory, that the Earth revolves around the sun, before the Inquisition, at a time when exploring the heavens with a telescope is an act of blasphemy.
Galileo faces the brutality of the Church at a time when science and reason and decency were often made to heel at the foot of brute force. Heretics were tortured until they recanted or burned at the stake. As ever, power trumps truth.
For the record, the closing tableaux is far too on the nose with its contemporary parallels.
However, Esparza beautifully captures the thrill of discovery. He sets the stage ablaze with his passion for science with a mercurial performance, alternately spiky and subtle.
There is also an endearing bromance that unfurls between the astronomer and his lifelong clergyman friend, who is destined to be Pope. The levity and lightness between them is a refreshing contrast with the lethargic tone and pace of much of the show.
Madalynn Mathews also rivets as Galileo’s brilliant daughter Virginia who is too poor for a suitable dowry and too smart to abjure her curiosity for the nunnery.
That’s why it’s so jarring the musical leaps over her conversion to piety. Her arc just doesn’t make sense and the “Louder” refrain is repeated too often. Virginia deserves far more nuance on the page.
What the musical does crystallize is the thrilling nature of audacious leaps forward in thinking. Not only are we not the center of the universe, we’re just a little blue speck amid the vast swirling celestial tapestry.
The fragility of our place in the universe is the real takeaway here and that theme, if not the show itself, echoes long after the curtain falls.
‘GALILEO: A ROCK MUSICAL’
Book by Danny Strong, music and lyrics by Michael Weiner and Zoe Sarnak, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: June 23
Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Running time: 3 hours, one intermission
Tickets: $29.50-$139 (subject to change); www.berkeleyrep.org