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’Galileo: A Rock Musical’ Review: Grafting 80s-Style Power Ballads Onto The Story of a Renaissance Visionary Yields Assertive But Awkward Results

This world premiere at Berkeley Rep has strengths, not least the vocal prowess of its cast. Still, it’s hard to imagine an easy road ahead for it.

But there are probably better ways to broach the subject than “Galileo: A Rock Musical,” an odd mixture of earnestness, flash and snark made odder by a score that trades in bombastic power-ballad sounds reminiscent of Jefferson Starship, Styx and Jim Steinman. Yet Galileo’s heedlessness constantly threatens that support, first when he defies orders to teach Copernicus (who realized the Earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa), then in writing a dialogue between old and new views that ridicules church orthodoxy. And despite scattered one-liners, “Galileo” at present feels all too sincere in treating a celebrated historical standoff as the kind of slick, shallow, glorified concert that would make better sense if performed by the likes of Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler.

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