Cancelling Socrates

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 11 June 2022

Tom Littler directs Jonathan Hyde as Socrates, Hannah Morrish as his wife Xanthippe (and also as a Daemon), Robert Mountford as his friend Euthyphro (and also as a Gaoler) and Sophie Ward as the hetaira Aspasia in Howard Brenton's new play Cancelling Socrates based on the four Platonic dialogues long published in the Penguin Classics series as The Last Days of Socrates.

The Jermyn Street Theatre is a small basement space underneath a restaurant, so the play is kept in an intimate form, the stage bare except for a fluted column, two pedestals for food offerings and a bench. The scene is amusingly set by having the sign pointing to the toilets in both Greek and English, and the formal announcements about starting times, switching off mobile phones and wearing facemasks given first in Greek and then in English translation (presumably modern rather than classical Greek). Indeed, when he first appears, the snippets of conversation involving Euthyphro, a young merchant who gives his name to the Platonic dialogue opening the sequence, come from invisible Greek speakers, though fortunately for us he answers in English.

Soon he meets Socrates, engagingly played as an eccentric with a powerful mind and a twitchy manner by Jonathan Hyde, Euthyphro soon being ambushed into a discussion about what constitutes justice and holiness, and whether the gods are just (particularly if different gods support different sides in a war, for example) before a conversation about their several reasons for attending the magistrates' court emerges. Euthyphro is, as usual, trapped by the Socratic line of questioning, but he is appalled at the flippancy with which Socrates seems to regard his own approaching case. 

Wisely the play does not directly present the Apology, Socrates's formal speeches to the court in which he defended himself against the accusation of sacrilege and corrupting the young, and then proposed an alternative to the death penalty voted by the jurors on his conviction (the defendant had the right to propose an alternative). There is no way the theatre could suggest a court hearing in which there were 501 jurors. Instead there is an extremely interesting and tense discussion between Aspasia and Xanthippe (a discussion that Plato would never have conceived of writing), the former appealing to politics and the state as the protectors of civic life, and the latter advancing the claims of family. Xanthippe has brought finely spun birds-nest pastries which she has made herself; Aspasia provides the new-fangled Egyptian delicacy she calls 'baklava' but scornfully dismisses any knowledge of how it is made, since a slave made it (that is what slaves are for). Irritatingly, Socrates, when he appears between his speeches, ignores his wife's cakes in favour of the exciting novelty of the pistachio-rich baklava. But Xanthippe knows her husband better than the worldly-wise Aspasia: she realises with horror that he will improvise his second speech rather than deliver the politic proposal prepared for him by Aspasia, and the result is disaster: the death penalty is upheld.

A cynical and down-to-earh gaoler presents the possibility that Socrates might simply escape from gaol rather than face the looming execution: as is cusomtanry for those with connections, the Gaoler has been bribed to let this happen. This covers the material in the short dialogue Crito but in a more comedic vein as the Gaoler's practical concerns (he needs th money for roof repairs at home) almost inure him to the restless Socratic pursuit of knowledge. The final scene of Socrates's life, depicted as an extended discussion of the afterlife among a host of friends in the Phaedo, is here presented in far more mundane fashion with only the Gaoler and Aspasia in attendace (Xanthippe having safely gone into exile with her sons), and the mysterious Daemon apparently present only to the great philosiopher's own consciousness.

The peculiarities of the Athenian court system and the weirdness of the position Socrates adopts - his apparent flippancy disguising a fearsome curiosity about deep philospohical questions - are brilliantly conveyed by the cast without stretching our patience or overloading us with too much informaton. At the same time there are some sly moments when the Athenian world and our own are shown to be not all that far apart: the trial takes place not long after a hideous plague beset the city, followed by a gruelling war (not that the UK is directly waging war at the moment, as Athens had been, but the point stands), and a waspish comment such as 'the young believe it's their absolute right not to be upset' drew wry chuckles from the mainly elderly audience.

These particular Platonic dialogues, among the most obviously dramatic of his works, have been finely brought to the stage in this excellent production.