On a nameless island in the remotest sea, Philoctetes dwells marooned. He sleeps in a cave, hunts birds for food, and laments injustices done to him. One day, General Odysseus arrives with a promising young lieutenant, determined to fulfill a prophecy that requires Philoctetes return to the front. Unfortunately, Philoctetes doesn’t believe in the unending war anymore. Odysseus and Neoptolemus must decide how far they’ll go to get the old veteran back into the fight.
The Greek playwright Sophocles is best known for his Oedipus plays, staples of high school and undergraduate literature courses. His play “Philoctetes” isn’t as famous. Perhaps that’s because, unlike the Oedipus plays, it presents humans as passengers in the story, which commences with a prophecy, and ends with the demigod Herakles demanding a resolution. Or maybe because, unlike Sophocles’ Oedipus, his Odysseus and Philoctetes are one-dimensional characters arguing the age-old debate between glory and individuality.
British performance poet and White rapper Kae Tempest updates Sophocles’ play, resetting it in modern war and removing the literal deus ex machina ending. Tempest also gives these characters more to do, especially the Greek chorus behind the men. These characters and their modern setting, pitched against a war that’d dragged on literally for decades, bespeak the weariness of a generation which has grown up with interminable war in distant lands and poverty at home.
Philoctetes was once among Greece’s greatest warriors. (The homeland in Tempest’s retelling is studiously vague.) But a festering injury now leaves him largely crippled, and as the injury never heals, he emits an offensive odor; nobody can stand to be around him. Sometimes he wants to return to civilization, and laments how his sons have reached adulthood in his absence. But he no longer trusts the homeland he left behind, and almost loves his exile.
Odysseus, sometimes mistaken for noble and valiant, is the consummate general. His only ambition is victory, and he’ll lie, cheat, and steal to achieve that. This isn’t the Odysseus you read in grade school. Odysseus abandoned Philoctetes ten years ago when the great veteran’s wound became too noxious; now, knowing that only Philoctetes and his bow can secure victory, he’s come to reclaim what he previously abandoned. Unfortunately for Odysseus, Philoctetes isn’t ready to forgive.
Between Philoctetes and Odysseus stands Neoptolemus. Son of the late, great Achilles, Neoptolemus was bred for war, but has little stomach for it. Unlike Odysseus, Neoptolemus has a conscience, and hates being ordered to lie. But he does what he’s told, and almost succeeds. Throughout the play, Neoptolemus arbitrates between Philoctetes’ strong martial backbone, and Odysseus’ willingness to do whatever it takes to win. He never quite decides how to reconcile the two conflicting forces.
Tempest keeps the foreground story mostly intact, though updated for the War On Terror generation. Their contribution to the experience is the Greek chorus behind the men. In the original, the chorus mainly comments upon the action, providing clarification and moral guidance where it’s needed. Tempest transforms the chorus into a collection of women living on the island, whose efforts to survive the war contrast with the men’s deliberate attempts to make the war worse.
Some of Tempest’s women were born here; others are refugees, driftwood washed ashore after something terrible happened elsewhere. While Philoctetes mentally rehashes the war and laments the injustices he’s endured, the women have built a functioning society out of male civilization’s discards. They regard him with a range of attitudes, from contempt to pity to misplaced romanticism. We, the audience, aren’t sure whether he can even see them, except when it suits his perverse needs.
The resulting hybrid both is, and isn’t, Sophocles’ original Greek tragedy. Because Tempest, unlike Sophocles, believes humans have something resembling free will, Tempest changes the ending, condemning the characters to repeat their situation infinitely. This interpretation is pessimistic, but not wrong, given the current climate. (This play debuted approximately as America was finally withdrawing from Afghanistan.) No longer do spiteful gods define human choices in theatrical tragedy; humankind is terrible enough without questionable divine intervention.
Tempest’s play premiered in 2021 to mixed reviews. Some critics liked how Tempest handled the Greek characters, but felt confounded by the chorus; others had the opposite reaction. This was heightened because all parts, male and female, were played by women. But I think this misses the point: true tragedies resolve not in death, which is optional, but in disappointment, which is eternal. We humans are as small and regrettable as the gods we worship.
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