Good Heavens! review

 Giant nerds rejoice! Daniel Repp’s new play Good Heavens! is a feast for anyone hungry for niche astronomy facts. Good Heavens! is all about the life and times of Johannes Kepler (You know, like the NASA telescope?), a German astronomer in the 1600s. He was trying to describe why the planets moved through the night sky the way they did, and also trying to reconcile his steadfast christian beliefs with fact, all during the protestant reformation.
As a new work, there’s a lot of refining to do before Good Heavens! will appeal to an audience wider than giant nerds. The narrators, Hypatia and Guillaume, are other historic astronomers used as a framing device for the action of the play. They’re extremely cheesy and stilted and the jokes they make don’t enhance the experience. The main plotline stands all on its own without their help. There’s also a B plot in the second act about Kepler’s mother. The connection was there, as he was using the same logic techniques for defending his mother in court as he was for proving why the earth goes around the sun. However I didn’t find that was necessary or furthered the story. It might do better as its own fact-dense mini play instead of being a part of this one.
The production itself was on Zoom, being a product of Hell Year 2020. Truly an awful medium that did Good Heavens! no favors. This play has potential, but only on a real stage. The actors truly did their best to seem like they were riding in bumpy carriages or studying by candlelight, but there is just no suspending disbelief over Zoom. The facts and ideas presented in this play were bogged down due to being delivered by talking heads in little squares. Repp could totally get away with so much dialogue and nigh-on astronomy lectures if only we were in a real space. Making use of a projection screen with animations would do wonderfully to illustrate the concept of planet’s elliptical orbits. And a competent sound designer could see the idea of a planet’s distance from the sun being musical intervals and take it to brilliant creative ends. Seeing a lowly Zoom performance of a script that aims so high is like seeing The Creation of Adam rendered in crayon. It’s all there! It's just not great yet.
Unless you’re a giant nerd, an educator, or an ex-planetarium volunteer, I can’t recommend seeing Good Heavens!. But if a revised edition ever comes out in person on a stage, you bet your butt I’m seeing it.

Good Heavens! on Youtube
More about the Kepler telescope (which retired in 2018)
Daniel Repp's website