“Few actors can project charismatic affability better than David Tennant,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. And fewer still have his ability to switch off the charm in an instant and “go dead behind the eyes”, as we discovered when he played the serial killer Dennis Nielsen in ITV’s Des.
In Good, set in pre-war Germany, Tennant plays another “seemingly ordinary man” – a liberal-minded literature professor, John Halder, who gradually becomes part of the Nazi “killing machine”, washes his hands of his Jewish best friend, and ends up arguing for the Final Solution.
First performed in 1981, C.P. Taylor’s quietly terrifying play offers a “surprising and perceptive psychological slant” on the Nazis’ rise. Halder is not “spurred by rousing speeches” and nationalist passion – but rather by bourgeois insularity, “self-interest and self-absorption”. And Tennant’s performance is “hypnotic”.
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This is “fascinating psychological theatre with the feel of a fever dream”, amplified in Dominic Cooke’s production by bold, non-naturalistic staging, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Vicki Mortimer’s set is “grey and prison-like”; scenes change abruptly. The strangeness of all this is explained by a reveal at the end, but “the payoff isn’t quite surprising enough”. Still, there is “enough intrigue, intellect and fine acting to keep us rapt”, and Tennant is “spellbinding in his ordinariness, not hiding Halder’s venality yet ensuring he remains human”.
Tennant’s is a “chilling performance rather than a moving one”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. It falls to Elliott Levey, as Maurice, Halder’s best friend, to locate the play’s emotion, and he brilliantly conveys both Maurice’s humour and rising panic.
Sharon Small is equally persuasive, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times: she has to switch between parts – Halder’s wives, his mother, a Nazi soldier – and does so in a way that is “clear, unfussy, instant”. Don’t expect fireworks from this excellent revival. “What you get is something stranger, more insidious, and I suspect much more memorable.”
Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1
