Galileo

COLLAPSIBLE Theatre, a mainly student company from Oxford, has struck gold with this lost script by Tom Stoppard about the life of Galileo. Written 30 years ago as a screenplay (which was quickly dismissed by film companies as unfeasible), Galileo first saw the light of day last spring, when Craig Raine published it in his journal Arete. It has all the marks of classic Stoppard: the swift wit, the precision of language, the confident grasp of ideas and the balancing of abstract debate with human interaction.

Galileo Galilei was a brilliant man who lived in dangerous times. He understood that the Earth passed around the sun at a time when others were condemned as heretics for questioning the Ptolemaic view of the universe favoured by the church. But Galileo, a charismatic figure with a firm grasp of the power politics of the era, stayed on the right side of the religious authorities for most of his life, succumbing only in his later years when he was forced to renounce his discoveries.

Director Jaspreet Singh Boparai has told his cast to trust Stoppard and they do, allowing the richness and cleverness of the script to shine. Himanshu Ojha gives a captivating performance as Galileo, and James Inman and Miles Weaver are excellent in supporting roles. The company’s greatest challenge is in managing the frequent changes of time and location, which sometimes leave the audience confused. Stoppard is brilliant at writing about clever men and ideas, at piercing through to the heart of an argument, and describing the nuts and bolts of the intellectual process.

"I have placed my eye to the knot hole in the fence around the universe," says Galileo to one of his challengers, "and you would have me content with joinery!"

The only sadness is that is little time left to explore Galileo’s family relationships.

Until 30 August. Today 8:45pm