The Foreword to one edition I read of this play (admiringly) calls Brecht's nature "cold, clinical" and tells us he consciously rejected what he called "Aristelian" drama that seeks its audience to feel empathy for the characters. Instead Brecht embraced alienation. He was also famously a Marxist and consciously sought to imbue his works with that philosophy. All things I'd ordinarily find off-putting. But then the Foreword goes on to call Galileo not just Brecht's "greatest" play but also "his most atypical and humanistic work."
Which may explain why overall I liked it. Not that Brecht's Galileo isn't in his way alienating. He's more anti-hero than hero, complex and definitely designed to make you feel ambivalent about his actions. This play is about a lot more than scientific truth versus religious dogma. That's embodied in two of my favorite lines from the play. The first, said by Galileo: As much of the truth gets through as we push through; we crawl by inches. And the play overall seems to condemn Galileo for not pushing enough. And then there's these trenchant lines, that condemn not so much an individual as society:
Andrea: Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.
Galileo: No, Andrea. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
