IT’S AN AUDACIOUS EFFORT, retelling on a Manhattan stage the story of Socrates’ trial and death.

That is the lofty aim of the simply-named Socrates, written by actor/writer/director Tim Blake Nelson and mounted by The Public Theater under the direction of Doug Hughes. (Opened Tuesday, April 16, 2019.)

As a 21st century audience the first hurdle we have to get over is the almost complete lack of a female presence. This is Fourth Century BC Athens, after all. Women are represented solely by Mirian A Hyman (below, right) in the role of Socrates’ wife Xanthippe – who comes entirely into her own, and powerfully so, only toward the end.  In essence it is  the thrill of precise and surgically-employed language (mainly from men) that must carry us through the show’s nearly three hours.

Nelson succeeds in giving us a pretty rigorous demonstration of the Socratic Method in questioning basic principles – unremittingly so in the earnest but patient probing of Socrates himself, as played by a strong and amiable Michael Stuhlbarg. Hughes’ agile direction draws out of Nelson’s demanding dialogue its innate elements of showmanship. The successive all-male scenes are energized by a jaunty ribaldry – one that will fade in a calibrated fashion as Socrates gets ever closer to being condemned by the city’s ‘democratic’ processes.

Such sardonic air-quotes often leap around that word Democracy during the play – as well as some serious, intensive brainstorming. The precious notion is also lampooned in almost caricature form when the crudest version of populism starts to overtake Athenian judiciousness.  (There’s even a repeated 3-beat chant of “KILL THEM NOW!“, about a group of generals standing trial, that discomfitingly evokes the Trumpian rallies’ call of “LOCK HER UP!” from 2016 and since. And an artisan with strong political opinions tells Socrates at one point: “I’d rule to make Athens great …” — and we can easily hear a missing “again”. Nelson has pointed out, though, that he finished writing Socrates before Trump ever ran.)

Not just during rabble-rousing passages, indeed in several scenes calling simply for animated argument, I must record that the players’ intended effect is sometimes spoiled by what sounds horribly like over-strained larynxes.  (Both I and my dear companion – whose nature is gentle but plenty resilient – were acutely pained by this rasping assault upon us. Oh, for those seemingly lost times of unforced, breath-controlled, well-trained stage-actors’ vocal projection!)

The action is framed overall by a modest but effective device. It is Socrates’ admirer Plato (a firm but compassionate Teagle F Biougere) who tells us the story … though in the staging’s own terms he’s actually telling it to a boy (Niall Cunningam) who may – probably will – become a student, if a querulous one, to Plato. It serves to remind us that it’s indeed to Plato that our modern-day pursuits of history, philosophy and literature largely owe what knowledge we have of Socrates. We’re largely reliant on Plato’s Dialogues, ‘Apología Sokrátous’ (his explanation or defense of Socrates, not of course any kind of apology), plus the Symposium and Republic.

THE PLAY RIGHTLY MAKES ROOM for an exploration of how much Socrates’ words are really Socrates’ – and how much they are Plato’s version of Socrates. We do witness Plato promising the older philosopher that he will put none of his own words into Socrates’ mouth – only to quickly confess to us the audience that “Yes, I broke my promise to a dying man whom I desperately loved“. He claims he reneged because the world would be better off having his words in Socrates’ voice – better, he says, “than I speak them in mine.”

The aptly Greek spirit of pathos hovers eloquently over these final scenes. Except perhaps for Socrates himself, logic is now displaced by feeling – especially when friends visit him, movingly urging that he escape the death sentence by any stratagem possible, including flight from his beloved city-state.

I was reminded of similar exchanges toward the end of Robert Bolt’s great modern classic play (and film) A Man for All Seasons when Sir Thomas More’s family, most affectingly his wife Alice, try without success to persuade him to recant his position and avoid execution in the Tower of London. It was almost unbearably poignant when played by Wendy Hiller and Paul Scofield. Interestingly, the forceful Broadway revival in 2008 of A Man for All Seasons with Frank Langella and Maryann Plunkett was directed, with a similar sharp interplay of principles and humanity, by none other than Doug Hughes.

And it’s just at this point in Hughes’ Socrates that Mirian Hyman (finally) gets to unleash Xanthippe’s loving fury at her husband for being prepared to die and abandon her and their sons forever, on a point of philosophical principle.

So the play comes to its end, but not with the end of Socrates – as he self-administers the fatal poison, as his sentence imposed by the people’s representatives. To bring an actual, final end to the evening’s performance, Plato and his prospective student return to complete the frame they provide. Nothing conclusive comes from Socrates departing this earth – rather, the questioning continues, as in this new master-and-pupil dialogue. The questioning will always continue.

‘Socrates’ plays at The Public Theater until May 19th – and is part of a Democracy Festival supported by the Athens- and New York-based Onassis Foundation.