Out of the mythological meeting between the abandoned general Philoktetes (Louis Cancelmi) and the floundering warrior Odysseus (Will Badgett), writer-director John Jesurun has fashioned a cool, subterranean play of ideas. At first, the dialogue may seem too high-flown and random, even self-indulgent, but it quickly becomes clear that Jesurun has cut and refined his florid, far-reaching themes to the bone. The peculiar push-pull between minimalist/maximalist in his text is matched by Cancelmi’s courageous central work in the title role, which must count as one of the weirdest and most interesting performances I have ever seen.
Cancelmi speaks in a carefully monotonous voice throughout, and he limits his body movements. When he tells us of his suffering in isolation, and the ways it has made him womanish, self-loving and finally nonexistent, Cancelmi emphasizes his character’s mask-like detachment, but in his eyes we can see glimmers of hope, of feeling begging to be released again (this performance couldn’t be more different than the wild Expressionist approach Cancelmi used earlier this season in Yale Rep’s production of Franz Wedekind’s Lulu). Cancelmi’s immovable object is set off against Badgett’s commanding but clearly tired Odysseus, so that when Philoktetes advances on Odysseus, we feel the coiled force of his pacifist, blank aggression. As Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, Jason Lew offers a telling contrast of youthful enthusiasm, as he continually asks about love with an adolescent break in his voice. Jesurun uses some effective anachronisms in the dialogue to close the gap between us and his ancient beings, and he utilizes some extremely sly, subtle humor at strategic points, too. But this is a melancholy play, lost in Philoktetes’ stoic yet beseeching loneliness; at sixty-five minutes, it’s a tight, lyric piece of theater that stays with you long after Cancelmi’s hollowed-out, betrayed Philoktetes shyly stops talking to the audience and tells us “good night.”
