Name: Good
Start: 2022-10-05
End: 2023-01-07
Location: Harold Pinter Theatre

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Recommended for ages 12+, no children under the age of 5 years will be admitted.

Good - LON [26063]

Genre: Play

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David Tennant was born in Bathgate, West Lothian in 1971 and grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire – just outside Glasgow. At age 16, he won a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and studied there for three years, one of the youngest students they had accepted. [Read more about David Tennant's career in London here.](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/west-end-features/david-tennant-on-stage-20-years-in-the-west-end)

On graduating, Tennant’s first professional production was in a production of *The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui* with the 7:84 Theatre Company. Numerous television appearances followed, including the role of transsexual barmaid Davina in a Scottish TV sitcom, *Rab C Nesbitt*, and the manic depressive Campbell in *Takin’ Over the Asylum* in 1994.

The early 1990s also saw him performing with the Dundee Repertory Theatre before making the move to London in 1994. Here his career began to flourish, making regular appearances with the [Royal Shakespeare Company](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/actor-profile/royal-shakespeare-company), beginning with the role of Touchstone in [*As You Like It*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/23078-as-you-like-it-shakespeares-globe) in 1996. Other appearances with the RSC include Jack Lane in *The Herbal Bed* (1996), Romeo in *Romeo and Juliet* (2000), Berowne in *Love’s Labour’s Lost* (2008) and the title role in *Hamlet* in 2008. The latter was adapted into a BBC film with Tennant reprising his role in 2009.

His most recent Shakespearean performances include Benedick in *Much Ado About Nothing* at the [Wyndham’s Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/wyndhams-theatre) with Catherine Tate in 2011, and the title role in *Richard II* for a limited run at Stratford-upon-Avon before transferring to the [Barbican Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/barbican) in 2013. He reprised the role of *Richard II* at the Barbican and in New York in 2016 as part of the RSC’s ‘King and Country’ cycle.

Tennant is probably best known for his television work, notably his performance in *Casanova* in 2005, as supervillain Kilgrave in *Jessica Jones* and as Alec Hardy in the hugely successful ITV drama series *Broadchurch* alongside Olivia Colman. His appearance as Barty Crouch Jr in the motion picture *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire* in 2005 is a fan favourite. 

Tennant’s [tenure as the Doctor](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/west-end-features/a-brief-history-of-doctor-who-actors-on-stage) in *Doctor Who* solidified him as one of the nation’s most beloved actors. Taking over the role from Christopher Eccleston in 2005, Tennant became the tenth actor to portray the role and played the role for 4 years, his final appearance being aired on New Year’s Day 2010. He returned for a one-off guest appearance in the show’s 50th anniversary episode in 2013. Tennant had been an avid fan of *Doctor Who* and has said it was a childhood dream to step into the Doctor’s shoes.

In March 2017, David Tennant returned to the West End’s [Wyndham’s Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/wyndhams-theatre) to play the title role in Patrick Marber’s *Don Juan in Soho*, a modern take on Molière’s classic *Don Juan*.

Tennant played John Halder in *Good* at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Tennant and his co-stars Sharon Small and Elliot Levey all received Olivier Award nominations for their performances. Following this, he will play the title role in *Macbeth* at the Donmar Warehouse.

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Don Juan In Soho [3491]

Don Juan In Soho

Don Juan In Soho [3491] Product Media

The Wyndham’s Theatre opened on 16 Nov. 1899. The theatre was commissioned by Charles Wyndham who also managed the [Criterion Theatre.](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/criterion-theatre) 

The Wyndham’s welcomed its first long-running production – Sandy Wilson’s musical *The Boyfriend* which opened on 14 Jan. 1959 and ran for over 2,000 performances. Another successful musical came to the theatre in 1972, the Roundhouse’s production of Stephen Schwartz’s *Godspell*, which ran for three years. The theatre has seen many notable actors grace the stage, including Alec Guinness, [Vanessa Redgrave](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/actor-profile/vanessa-redgrave), Diana Rigg and Madonna.

In May 2005, the Wyndham’s Theatre was bought by Cameron Mackintosh through his company Delfont Mackintosh Theatres. The theatre was renovated in 2008 and plays regularly run for limited engagements at the Wyndham's Theatre.

## Wyndham's Theatre Seating Information

The auditorium has four levels - Stalls, Royal Circle, Grand Circle and Balcony.

In the Stalls, the front four rows of seating are not raked, but other than that the seats in the Stalls offer excellent views of the stage.

Only the seats in Row G of the Royal Circle are affected by the overhang of the Grand Circle. Seats are well raked, offering great views of the stage.

The Grand Circle is set very high in this theatre.

The Balcony is set behind and above the Grand Circle, so does feel far from the stage, but the view is unobstructed.

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Wyndham's Theatre

What would it take for a seemingly good man to be seduced by such a vile ideology as Nazism – to the point of becoming an SS officer and an active participant in its worst atrocities? That’s the premise of CP Taylor’s 1981 play [*Good*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/26063-good-tickets), now revived in the West End with [David Tennant](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/news/a-complete-guide-to-good-starring-david-tennant-in-the-west-end) playing the susceptible Halder.

It’s an urgent question that we are all facing in a time where the far right is once again resurgent, as is anti-Semitism, and democratic norms are being eroded across the world. Dominic Cooke has mounted a pacey production, and Tennant is joined by two excellent co-stars in Sharon Small and Elliot Levey. However, Taylor’s play keeps us at arm’s length before finally gripping in a stronger second half.

Halder is a literature professor in 1930s Frankfurt with a wife and three kids, and a mother with visual impairment and advanced dementia. He’s a bit of a loner – Jewish psychiatrist Maurice is his only friend – and he expresses his frustrations with caring for his mother in a pro-euthanasia novel (which Hitler later praises as being written “from the heart”). He begins an affair with his young student, Anne, while also becoming involved with the Nazi Party.

Taylor’s big dramatic idea is to demonstrate Halder’s fatal detachment from reality – which suits the Nazi purpose, as he is able to distance himself from humanity to the extent of extermination – by having him constantly hear music. So he might be talking to Maurice, but he’s also listening to a dance band and carrying on an internal monologue. Maurice doesn’t quite seem real to him; no one else does, except perhaps Anne. The music turns iconvenient reality into fantasy.

Taylor makes the sinister point that it’s passivity, rather than an active enthusiasm for evildoing, that is the real insidious force in society – people turning a blind eye to the persecution of others if it makes their own lives better. Halder personifies that, drifting into horrors while finding a new justification for each step; his casual moral equivocation is chilling.

It’s a harrowing demonstration of how quickly we can adjust to “the new normal” – like Halder and Anne carrying out a loving domestic conversation while she helps him into his SS uniform – and the banality of evil, like Halder sighing when he's summoned for Kristallnacht because he was happily pottering in the garden. Plus there’s an extra charge in this production – with all the actors using their natural accents – from the casting of lovable Doctor Who star David Tennant; surely he could never become a Nazi officer?

But because we spend much of the play essentially in Halder’s mind, switching between past and present, memories and ponderings, the audience is also detached from the supporting characters, who only appear in brief snapshots. That issue is exacerbated by Small and Levey multi-roling (although very ably), further blurring them together, so Halder’s mounting betrayals don’t land with as much as force as they should.

There is also the issue, particularly in early scenes, that Halder never really seems like a “good” person – however reductive that constantly used term might be. He’s too self-absorbed to be a decent friend, and he resents his wife for not being better at childcare and cooking; he even speculates she might have brain damage because she doesn’t conform to that housewife role. His mother is certainly difficult, and the fraught scenes between them are among the play’s most affecting, but it’s still a leap to legitimising mercy killing. 

However, Tennant superbly captures Halder’s latent vanity and self-serving rationalisations, and does well with both the odd moments of humour (including a folk dance) and vulnerable reflections. Though his route to Nazism is hazy – for example, it’s never quite clear whether his career is at stake if he doesn’t join the Party, or if he’s more ambitious – Tennant gives the latter stages, when Halder has walked too far down a dark path to turn back, an icy resolve.

Small is impressively versatile, flipping between Halder’s terrified mother, absentminded wife and alluring lover, plus a bluff SS major. Levey brings pathos to Maurice, whose understandable fears are shrugged off by Halder, although it’s hard not to compare with his recent Olivier Award-winning turn as Herr Schultz in the  more emotionally powerful *[Cabaret](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/23939-cabaret-tickets)*.

Cooke’s production imprisons us in Halder’s psyche by having minimal set (a bleak stone cell from Vicki Mortimer) and flipping between scenes swiftly via Zoe Spurr’s lighting changes. There are no props, just sound effects for something like Halder and Maurice clinking glasses – or, later, the terrible shattering of glass. Panels in the wall slide open to reveal horrors like the flames awaiting the burning of books. It’s a strong framing, and there are striking, resonant messages within this work, but as drama it unsettles when really it should devastate.

[*Good is running at the Harold Pinter Theatre through 24 December. Book tickets for Good on London Theatre*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/26063-good-tickets)

*Photo credit: David Tennant in Good at the Harold Pinter Theatre. (Photo by Johan Persson)*

'Good' review – David Tennant is chilling as a professor who drifts into Nazism

The Harold Pinter Theatre opened on 15 Oct. 1881 as a comic opera house. Its name on opening was the Royal Comedy Theatre, though its ‘Royal’ epithet was dropped in 1884.

The Comedy Theatre helped establish the New Watergate Club in 1956, a society which helped overturn the stage censorship enforced by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. The formation of the Club meant that the plays banned by the Government could be performed at this venue as it was now being run as a private club rather than a commercial entity. Notable plays in this category include Arthur Miller’s *A View from the Bridge* and Tennessee Williams’ *Cat On A Hot Tin Roof*. The censorship was finally overturned in 1968. 

Harold Pinter's works were often performed here: *The Homecoming*, *The Caretaker*, *Moonlight*, *No-Man’s Land* and *The Hothouse* all enjoyed successful runs, and Pinter directed a production of *The Old Masters* here in 2004. After his death, it was thought fitting to bestow the honour of naming a theatre after him, and the name was officially changed on 13 Oct. 2011 to the Harold Pinter Theatre. The Ambassador Theatre Group own the Harold Pinter Theatre.

## Harold Pinter Theatre Seating Information

The auditorium has four levels – Stalls, Dress Circle, Royal Circle and Balcony. The top three levels are a horseshoe shape around the stalls.

The Stalls is a single block of seats, and offers good sightlines. Some seats are impaired by supportive pillars and the overhang of the Dress Circle.

The Dress Circle doesn’t offer a great raking in the seating, but the view is not affected by the overhang of the Royal Circle. 

The Royal Circle seats curve towards the stage more noticeably than the Dress Circle.

The Balcony feels very high in this theatre.

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