“Acropolis Now”
Just in case you’re unable to snare a ticket to the new
Broadway hit Hadestown, you can catch
a glimpse of two of its central characters, Hades and Persephone, in a brief
vignette that may wake you with a snap during Socrates. Tim Blake Nelson’s history play at the Public is an intelligent, well-acted,
sometimes engrossing, sometimes sleep-inducing, three-hour talkathon about the eponymous
fifth-century B.C. Greek thinker.
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| Michael Stuhlbarg, Austin Smith. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
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| Teagle F. Bougere, Niall Cunningham, Dave Quay, Michael Stuhlbarg, Robert Joy. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Alcibiades is only one of the important Athenian citizens,
like the wealthy Crito
(Robert Joy) and the playwright Aristophanes
(Tom Nelis), connected to Socrates (Michael Stuhlbarg) in this well-researched
biodrama about the man’s intellectual pursuits and influence. That influence was
transmitted down the ages, not by his own writings, since he distrusted this
method of perpetuating his thoughts, but through the writings of another, ultimately
equally famous philosopher, Plato (Teagle F. Bougere).
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| Company of Socrates. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
It is, in fact, Plato, from whom we learn about Socrates. Nelson’s
structure presents Plato teaching a bright, 15-year-old-boy (Niall Cunningham) about
Socrates’ life and ideas as they’re enacted. Plato and the boy (presumably
the young Aristotle) observe from the sidelines. Occasionally, the boy assumes the role
of young Plato.
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| Miriam A. Hyman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and company. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
This structure allows Nelson (best known as
an actor in films like O Brother, Where
Art Thou? and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)
to follow the scruffy, bearded Socrates around on his mission to learn as much
as he can about everything by questioning what people actually know about what
they think they know, which often is not that much. Regardless of the annoyance
he stirs up, he has a band of followers who love watching his quick mind eviscerate
his victims, almost as if it were a sport.
In scene after scene, he claims to know nothing himself, saying
he’s not even a teacher, while, using what’s known as the elenchus method
of argument and refutation to ask penetratingly skeptical questions about the
meaning of things. These include form and color, virtue, rhetoric, leadership, death, justice,
and wisdom, his Socratic method always based not on an “I know something you
don’t” premise but on one that simply seeks answers to truths he, along with
his listeners, discover in the process.
As we attend to Socrates’ comments and explanations, we often
discover topically pertinent ideas, especially when it comes to questions of democracy
and just governance in a world where tyrants often rule: it’s impossible, in one example, not to hear an echo of MAGA in one man’s boast that he would “rule to
make Athens great.”
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| Robert Joy, Michael Stuhlbarg. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Just as the boy is introduced to Socrates, then, so are we,
and we come to understand how valuable it would be to have such a gadfly
buzzing at today’s leaders. His personal accomplishments as a warrior are
described, we learn of his friendships and his habits, and we even meet his scolding
wife, Xanthippe (Miriam A. Hyman), mother of his three sons, who introduces a bit of modern feminism in one of her speeches.
Socrates' questions skewer conventional attitudes,
including those regarding religion, and his insistent questioning can easily
get under the skin. Some prominent citizens determine that his beliefs—especially
his atheism—and his reported predilection for young boys is corrupting Athenian
society. This leads to his being tried for his behavior. Despite the outcry of his
followers, he’s sentenced to die by poison (hemlock, of course, unnamed in the dialogue
but noted in the stage directions).
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| Company of Socrates. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Socrates is a didactic drama, dramatizing situations we once
read of in Plato, and reminding us of why Socrates was such an iconic figure. But that
doesn’t mean it’s not also something of a theatrical slog, and that its drama
is more in the moment to moment exploration of ideas than in the pursuit of a traditional dramatic arc.
Since Socrates’ “execution,” if you will, is one of history’s
most famous, director Doug Hughes takes considerable pains to draw it out realistically,
even giving it a Christ-like patina as the condemned martyr's friends and wife surround him. Having been given the option
of fleeing but finding it repugnant, he takes a basin bath during whose drawn-out process he seems to clean his every pore, taking on the
aura of ritual.
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| Alan Mendez, Ro Boddie, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jo Tapper. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Then comes a death scene so extended and minutely observed,
with its heaving and tossing and retching and convulsions, that it will likely
entice other actors to tackle the role. Few death scenes are as physically demanding
(or require so much histrionic ham) as this one; Stuhlbarg nails it but it could have been halved and been just as effective. He even
manages to keep his substantial tummy, facing skyward, still enough so as not to give away the game. Of course, the stiller it is, the more we look for signs of breathing.
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| David Aaron Baker and company of Socrates. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
I’ve seen Stuhlbarg in many films, like A Serious Man and Call Me By
Your Name, and TV dramas, like “Boardwalk Empire,” but never on stage,
although he’s done 10 shows at the Public, including the leads in Hamlet and Richard II. His performance as Socrates, in which he looks like a
cross between Mandy Patinkin and Moses, couldn’t be better, with every word defined
by his need to seek truth and reject anything short of it. He’s emotionally
powerful but sarcastically comic, has a potent vocal instrument, and knows how
to suit the word to the action, the action to the word.
His supporting company of 16, many playing two or three
roles, is perfectly fine, with such authoritative thespians as Peter Jay Fernandez,
Joe Tapper, Lee Wilkof, and David Aron Baker joining those already mentioned.
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| Michael Stuhlbarg. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Hughes stages the work on a rather dull, charcoal
gray set by Scott Pask (inspired by David’s
1787 painting, “The Death of Socrates”), with platforms at the sides
and a space in the rear wall that opens like a dumbwaiter to reveal the few colorful vignettes for which the play allows. For no
discernible reasons, though, some scenes require loud-voiced actors to stand at the
rear of the theatre, shouting at the stage, forcing necks to swivel like Linda
Blair’s to see them.
Interestingly, the set and auditorium walls are inscribed in
ancient Greek with the words of Pericles’ fifth-century BC funeral oration;
less interestingly, there’s no way you know this without examining or touching the auditorium
walls yourself as you use the aisles, or read the handout provided by the staff. For the most part, the words are otherwise invisible without infrared vision.
Lighting designer Tyler Micoleau picks up the burden of dabbing this bland environment with life, doing an especially nice job for Hughes’s tableau arrangements
during Socrates’ last moments. Catherine Zuber’s modest, mostly pale, earth-toned
costumes, many of them nicely draped chitons, capture the essential look of
classical Greece.
Theatre doesn’t often succeed in making interesting the kind
of cerebral discourse present in Socrates.
Accessible as it generally is, it can also seem never-ending, aimed
more at the head than the heart; the effort to follow it becomes increasingly
less compelling.
Nelson’s play isn’t far from the kind of old-fashioned play Maxwell Anderson used to write, with elevated dialogue spoken by once-famous people whose names we vaguely remember from our college days but whose experiences have a message for our own times.
Nelson’s play isn’t far from the kind of old-fashioned play Maxwell Anderson used to write, with elevated dialogue spoken by once-famous people whose names we vaguely remember from our college days but whose experiences have a message for our own times.
Still, even with its valuable lesson reminding us of the dangers
lurking in the delicate fabric of democracy, one might ask, does it really
have to be so damned long?
Public
Theater/Martinson Theater
425
Lafayette St., NYC
Through
June 2
OTHER
VIEWPOINTS: