Through December 20, 2008
Reviewed by Bob Wilcox
Galileo Galilei's conflicts with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church have appealed to several playwrights, Bertolt Brecht most famously, and with the most successful results. In his one-hour piece called The Starry Messenger, Rick Foster manages to keep most of this excitement at a safe distance.
He does this by using only two characters in his play, Galileo himself and his daughter. Though a nun, the daughter is hardly one of her father's enemies. So, except for those moments when the daughter speaks as one of those enemies, the thrills of intellectual combat, with the Inquisition's fiery stake looming near-by, come to us second-hand, as the father and the daughter narrate his struggles with the ecclesiastical authorities.
For The Starry Messenger is intended as an educational piece. It means to explain to young scholars Galileo's discoveries of the laws of motion and his use of that new instrument the telescope to explore the mysteries of the universe, as well as to introduce students to the conflict between dogmatic religion and unfettered science.
Playwright Foster gives a little whimsical turn to his lessons by setting them in the present day. Though she died in 1634, Sister Maria addresses us in our own time, and she awakens her father from the sleep of death so that he can join her in telling us the story of his life, discoveries, and conflicts. It's all a little precious perhaps, and the humor you find in the play's anachronisms depends on how well you tolerate that sort of cuteness.
But Pamela Reckamp plays Sister Maria in Upstream Theater's production of The Starry Messenger, and that gives this production a huge boost. Reckamp can make any role believable, and she does it with charm and infectious energy. If John Bratkowski, as Galileo, seems a little stiff at times, it's perhaps a result of all those years his character was dead, and Bratkowski does rise to the big moments.
Nicholas Tamarkin's direction keeps the tone bright. He and Philip Boehm designed the minimal set and Bonnie Kruger provided the two period-appropriate costumes.
Upstream Theater's The Starry Messenger, produced in cooperation with the St. Louis Science Center, has several performances for the school audiences it was obviously designed for. And it has one more public performance, at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008, at 305 S. Skinker. Find tickets and information at 314-863-4999, or
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