![]() There’s the cold-shouldering of his wife and dementia-addled mother (Halder’s resulting novel about euthanasia inspires Hitler himself, an intellectually provocative twist). Of more chilling impact, actually, I’d say, are the simple vignettes that catch the incremental want of empathy. But the motif leads to a grim thematic pay-off. ![]() There’s an innocuous and even comic aspect to this, as he madly steps in time to rounds of folk music. The strange unreality of it all is brought home by the way Halder snaps into reveries upon hearing strains of band music. It’s not mere brute thuggery that leads to a point where gas chambers become possible, we’re shown, but, among other things, succumbing to petty bourgeois insularity. He’s the product of a civilised society abounding with rational discourse about inner lives but unable to tame wilder impulses – a man so steeped in analysis, he’s numb, actually, to others. This isn’t a citizen spurred by rousing speeches – rather one propelled by self-interest and self-absorption. Taylor offers a surprising and perceptive psychological slant. In a hypnotic performance, the 51-year-old actor – as angular as ever, wearing spectacles and clean academic attire – keeps us in suspense, giving conspiratorial flashes and darkening into malevolence, but, in the main, eerily neutral and preoccupied. That makes them quasi figments of Halder’s imagination, placing more focus on Tennant himself. The supporting characters are here mostly played by just two actors, Elliot Levey and Sharon Small, who – confined too within a comfortless, prison-like set – bring a marked abstraction to the proceedings as they shift between personae and scenes. In fact, he gives it a Pinter-esque sheen. First seen in 1981, Scottish playwright CP Taylor’s best-known work isn’t obvious West End fare, but director Dominic Cooke doesn’t try to soften it for the Harold Pinter. In Good, he applies his multi-faceted talent to the part of a seemingly ordinary man called Halder, a Frankfurt literature professor who, by degrees, becomes part of the Nazi killing machine, standing by during book-burning and washing his hands of his Jewish best-friend. His affectless turn as serial killer Dennis Nilsen on ITV’s Des was the stuff of nightmares. Fewer still are mercurial enough to be able to switch all that off – go dead behind the eyes. Few actors can project charismatic affability better than David Tennant.
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