Review: CANCELLING SOCRATES, Jermyn Street Theatre

Socrates: enigmatic Greek philosopher and generator of many a good quote. Accused of sacrilege and corrupting the young minds of Athens, he was sentenced to death by forced poisoning. He might be revered as the founding father of Western philosophy, but he was a dangerous presence back in Attic times.

Howard Brenton's newest piece takes a cerebrally comedic look at the cryptic personality and his ironic, deftly challenging approach to the law and life itself. Based on the eyewitness accounts of his contemporaries (aka mainly Plato), Cancelling Socrates follows a few of his nearest and dearest during one of the most famous trials in history.

Tom Littler (current AD of Jermyn Street and Orange Tree Theatre's future leader) directs Jonathan Hyde as the philosopher, supported by Robert Mountford as Euthyphro (the one from the eponymous dilemma), Hannah Morrish as Socrates's wife Xanthippe, and Sophie Ward as his mistress Aspasia.

Hyde is a cartoonish, prêt-à-porter version of the figure. Pedantic, argumentative, and a contrarian at heart, he eagerly engages in philosophical discourse and delights in turning every conversation into a questioning. With a finger pointed at the heavens like Plato in Raphael's 'The School of Athens', Hyde owes his visual mannerism to the most famous of Socrates's pupils.

He's amused by defiance and the trial becomes his final confrontation. Thrilled when he debates adversaries and friends alike, he tears down Euthyphro's points of view brick by brick only to rebuild them unsteadily. While Hyde is billed as the star of the show (and rightfully so, he's been in all our favourite films from the 90s from Jumanji to Titanic going through Richie Rich and The Mummy), it's Mountford who comes out on top.

The initial posh intellectual poise of his Euthyphro is replaced by the Gaoler's cockney working-class scepticism in the second act. He's at ease with both of his characters' quick-wittedness, and the comic vein of Brenton's script flourishes with his savoir faire. He is candidly hilarious.

The writer founds the text on a series of opposites: right and wrong, sacred and profane, Euthyphro's fashionable clothes and Socrates's rags, and so on. While this generally works in terms of highlighting all the shades of grey in-between, it also exacerbates the limited exploration we find in a few areas, namely the women.

He presents Xanthippe and Aspasia not as two faces of the same coin, but rather with a Madonna-or-whore concept. Where the lover is a practical, career-focused woman whose principal worry is the state alone and who wants to be a citizen first and foremost (which we understand as wanting to have the same rights and decisional powers as a man here), his wife is religious and superstitious, worried about her children's future reputation.

Xanthippe despises Aspasia not because of her role in her husband's affairs (there have been many) but because she perceives her childless counterpart as a superior intellectual but an inferior woman. Morrish is passionate and sensitive in her performance. She pleads and tries to reason with the father of her children and is met with cool acknowledgment. But Ward's mistress, stately and politically acute, sees his trial as a means to an end, a message for the people of Athens, and only shows a hint of devotion towards as his life comes to a close.

Designer Isabella Van Braeckel colour-blocks the space with blood-red flooring and green walls. Three Doric order columns and a simple bench are the only companions to the actors, who are clad in excessively realistic costumes that not only recklessly toe a fancy-dress line but clash with the rather minimalist and abstract staging.

The basic set allows the dramedy to pop and crackle against it, but doesn't fit with the rest of the visuals. The opposite is also true; the clothes are too gaudy in a production that could have been stripped down to abstraction further. Littler isn't as daring as he could be - or as much as Brenton is himself - with the material, preventing the piece from taking root.

The playwright, however, delivers an entertaining script, trimming the philosophy down to size, underlining it with comedy, and adding a dash of anachronism in both language and references. It's timely too, with the political climate of Socrates's time being eerily familiar. A plague has just ended, democracy is being threatened, and cancel culture risks putting people to trial before they're found guilty.

It's interesting how the play debuted a week after the conclusion of Depp v. Heard, a court case strongly linked to the modern phenomenon. With his title, Brenton implies that the philosopher was "cancelled", but is that really the circumstance here?

A public figure is "cancelled" - ostracised, essentially boycotted - when online groups collectively decide that the person doesn't virtually deserve the privileges their status allows, This is due to accusations or allegations of different natures, way before the person's been tried by a jury or allowed to explain themselves.

Usually, it boils down to celebrities being shunned from public and creative life. Sometimes it lasts (Kevin Spacey to an extent, for now), but mostly it doesn't (Chris Brown and Louis C.K. are perhaps the most unsuccessful "cancellations"). Brenton's implication that Socrates "cancelled himself" is as peculiar as his usage of the terminology in this instance.

Was he really cancelled? Did he cancel himself? Does it even matter at this point? None of these questions are answered or ultimately pertinent, but it's a gripping and surprisingly funny play, nonetheless.

Cancelling Socrates runs at Jermyn Street Theatre until 15 June.

Photo credit: Steve Gregson

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.