Anything but Good?
Just back from the revival of the 1982 Good at the Harold Pinter https://goodtheplay.com/ - a 3 hander (until the very last scene) with David Tennant playing a German literature professor and novelist in the 1930s and Sharon Small and Elliot Levey playing a multiple of parts, on occasion within the same ‘scene’.
The actors remain on stage throughout (sometimes sitting back in a Brechtian staged style). How does a ‘civilised’ ‘enlightened’ intellectual persuade himself into the NSDAP , and then to the worst excesses of that whilst still retaining a good opinion of himself? What sort of arguments can he make to himself to remain, in his eyes, civilised and enlightened.
The play, addresses, of course the wider problem that it was not just SA thugs, but also intellectuals who rationalised the Mein Kampf mentality from ‘bluster’ to ‘acceptable’, and offers at least one route for that conversion to happen. The play is about self-delusion, of course, but also about the ways self-delusion can be rationalised, can indeed, for a second, appear rational. And how people will step, almost unawares, into Bad, whilst still embracing Good. The ‘rational’ anti-semitism offered by the Professor (not the ranting of the mob) is particularly disturbing.
This is, of course, a think piece, and much would have worked well on radio – but the acting of all, and particularly Sharon Small whose multiple parts are a particular challenge was exemplary. The density of the writing (and keeping track of who were now the protagonists as the actors change roles) does militate against the audience losing concentration if they are to keep on top of things
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”"