Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

This production needs more dosh: Good, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

Plus: there are several uncomfortable truths about migration concealed within The Boy with Two Hearts at the Dorfman

David Tennant, as a Scottish Nazi, in Good at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson 
issue 22 October 2022

Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living in Germany in 1933, whose cosy life is disrupted by troublesome females. His mum is a cranky basket case dying in hospital and his wife is a manic depressive who can’t look after their kids. Both women speak with Scottish accents. John has a fling with a third Scotswoman who studies Goethe at his university.

Weirdly, all three women – mum, wife and girlfriend – are played by the same actress. Couldn’t the producers fork out for a proper cast? They certainly didn’t spend more than a fiver on the set, which looks like an abandoned bomb shelter made of cardboard. The story follows John’s gradual drift towards Nazism which he embraces half-heartedly in the hope of furthering his career. His Jewish friend Maurice begs him for help fleeing Germany before he gets carted off to a death camp but John seems untroubled by his pal’s plight.

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