How to review a play whose subject famously distrusted written accounts of anything, even by his most valued disciple? “Men can’t know me by reading what I said,” the title character of Tim Blake Nelson’s new play, Socrates, chides Plato at one point, adding, “You’re a philosopher. We write words on the soul.”
As a critic, my responsibility and aspirations are far less lofty. So I can in good faith report that playwright Tim Blake Nelson—perhaps best known for his acting credits, which include films by the Coen Brothers and other A-list directors—has crafted a portrait of one of Western philosophy’s most influential thinkers that’s as bracingly smart and frank as it is richly entertaining and accessible.
Nelson, who is also a filmmaker, studied classics at Brown University before embarking on a career in show biz, and could have no doubt dived into the weeds of Socrates’s beliefs and teachings, though the philosopher himself would have dismissed the latter term. Nelson addresses that stuff, but focuses on the character of a man who, to a fault, sought truth above all else—without claiming to possess the wisdom that would give him absolute knowledge of it—and who was intent that his followers learn not what to think, as Nelson puts it at one point, but how to think.
[Read David Finkle’s [★★★★★] review here.]
Socrates also shows us how these virtues, blazingly embodied by the wondrous Michael Stuhlbarg, were perceived as a threat within a democracy as fragile as our own seems right now, and as vulnerable to the scourge of populism. The play begins after Socrates’s death, using discussions between Plato, imbued with a gentle but formidable nobility by Teagle F. Bougere, and a boy he has taken under his wing—Aristotle, clearly, though he’s never explicitly identified—as a framing device, having the two converse intermittently throughout.
We’re then delivered back to the streets and elite gathering spots of Athens—distinctions are suggested more than underlined by Scott Pask’s minimalist set (though the upstage wall opens at points to reveal graphic debauchery and, later, worse)—where Stuhlbarg’s Socrates paces heavily about, waving off the praise of admirers and baiting those he takes issue with: poets, politicians and, worst of all, sophists.
Watching the actor, as the philosopher, engage and then interrogate his targets is like observing a master musician at work. Dynamics and rhythm of speech, gesture and expression conspire to draw in targets and then pounce, not in spite but out of the relentless curiosity and integrity that, Stuhlbarg’s piercing work suggests, were a source of neither pleasure nor pride to their possessor. Under Doug Hughes’s astute, vigorous direction, the actor offers a devastating portrait of the toll of single-minded righteousness, not only on the protagonist but on his detractors and champions alike.
Hughes culls excellent performances from the other players, who frequently juggle two or more parts. Austin Smith, who exudes charisma as Alcibiades, the regal general who both worships and teases Socrates, does double duty as Simmias, a follower (and sometime objector) featured in Plato’s dialogues. David Aaron Baker’s roles include Anytus, who introduces himself as a “simple tanner of hides” before warning his fellow humble Athenians of “the disdain felt toward you, the people, by the corrupt elite”—words that Baker spits up like bile, evoking the kind of bitter rhetoric that’s become too familiar to all of us in recent years.
We’re also introduced to Socrates’s wife, Xanthippe, who gets to air her own grievances in what feels like a gratuitous nod to our times in a play dominated (as those times were, after all) by men—though Miriam A. Hyman delivers the monologue with mesmerizing ferocity.
Socrates’s final moments are depicted, in grueling detail; anyone unfamiliar with the effects of hemlock may want to poke around online in preparation. In the end, though, Nelson’s play is a celebration, of a man who apparently lived and died on his own terms, imperfectly, but more concerned with doing right than being heralded for it. More than 2400 years on, his story, as told by others, still sets a rare and exhilarating example.
Socrates opened April 16, 2019, at the Public Theater and runs through June 2. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
