About the Play:

Good was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

Good is a full-length drama by C.P. Taylor. How does a good man turn toward the unthinkable? A German novelist and university professor must rationalize his decision to join the Nazi Party and participate in its destructive practices and face the effects these choices have on his friendship with a Jewish physician. In this expressionistic play with music, C.P. Taylor poses questions that remain all too familiar in today's political landscape. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Good is set at the time when Hitler has just come into power and allows audiences to watch as a 'good' man gets caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich. Not everything is black and white. Sometimes it's all shades of gray. Good examines Germany's subtle descent into Nazism through the story of John Halder, a literature professor who writes a novel about compassionate euthanasia, drawing the attention of the Nazi Party. Despite his own misgivings, John is tempted by the changing world around him. Unconsciously, this well-meaning scholar is led into participation in the hell that follows, as do the disturbing questions about... "good." With different pressures from his depressed wife, demanding mother, the pretty student who's in love with him, and the pleadings of his Jewish friend Maurice, John finally succumbs to New Order to advance his career and comes face to face with the consequences of the path he's chosen. The writing, the interplay of music and drama, the stark simplicity of the staging that takes the audience into the complexity of a mind that can deal with warm humanity and chilling horror almost within the same moment make this production both a challenge and an opportunity. This politically potent play continues to be remarkably resonant today as issues of demagoguery emanate around the world.

Good premiered in 1981 by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the Donmar Warehouse in London. It was then brought to the Booth Theatre on Broadway a year later by the RSC. The play has seen several revivals, notably the 1999 production at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and is regularly performed in regional repertory, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 6 male

What people say:

"Good is a triumphant, wonderful and incandescent evening in the theatre." — New York Post

"A flawless display of theatre craft." — New York Times

"History is a nightmare into which the antihero of Good sleepwalks." — Time Magazine

About the Playwright:

Cecil Philip Taylor (1929-1981), usually credited as C. P. Taylor, was a Glasgow-born playwright who wrote just under eighty plays for a wide range of audiences: community theatre, the West End of London, and regional theatre as well as several for radio and television. Though he had been a working playwright for twenty years, he is best known for final play Good, which has been described as the definitive piece written about the Holocaust in the English-speaking theatre.