Good

A story about a liberal-minded university professor who drifts well-meaningly into a position in the upper reaches of the Nazi administration, Good is a profound and alarming examination of passivity and the rationalisation of evil.

John Halder, a professor of literature, seems to be a good man; he diligently visits his blind and senile mother and looks after his vacant wife and three children. He is unremarkable, other than an unusual neurotic tic: the imaginary sound of band music plays in the background of his life, particularly at moments of high emotion. But by writing a book – the result of his own experience – discussing euthanasia for senile elderly people and by lecturing on the delicacy of German literary culture, John has unintentionally made himself a very desirable acquisition for the Nazi Party.

By rationalised and intellectually reasoned steps he is absorbed into the direction of the death camps, a transformation all the more chilling because it does not seem dramatic, until the last horrible resounding note of the play.

Good is a structured stream of consciousness, punctured by the musical medley that plays inside Halder’s head. The first production was staged at the London Warehouse in 1982.