![]() “You either say: ‘Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope it might come my way’ – or you declare your love and interest. Sharp did not wait for the part to be offered to her. Our lonely, wounded hero Philoctetes is played by Sharp, best known for police drama Scott & Bailey, the National’s A Taste of Honey, and perhaps the scariest episode of Doctor Who ever, Midnight. ‘There is life that is usually ignored in these grand old stories’ … Paradise actors rehearse. I really felt he would enjoy Kae taking it on.” Reading Kae’s poetry, and being a superfan of Brand New Ancients, I felt a synergy with what Sophocles was doing. “It was like watching a conversation between soldiers 3,000 years apart.” Rickson – who directed Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, which returns to the West End in 2022 – adds: “When you give an old play to a writer, you never know what it will do to them. “There was a resonance to their reading,” Tempest says. A mentor to the writer for several years, he invited them to a reading performed by ex-servicemen. It was Rickson who introduced Tempest to the story of Philoctetes. Concepts that Sophocles was fascinated by – dignity, honour, exile, trust – are as important now as 3,000 years ago. “When you do these plays,” Rickson says, “they allow you to unpack what heroism is. ![]() The original involves godly intervention, acceptance of fate, and an overriding devotion to triumph and battle-fuelled glory.įollowing largely the same structure, but questioning the morals, meanings and ending of Sophocles’ original, Tempest sets this adaptation in a non-time, where weapons from the gods sit alongside references to flatscreen TVs. When Odysseus needs Philoctetes again in order to fight, he returns to the island with young soldier Neoptolemus, and attempts to trick the older man into leaving the island with them. Philoctetes – the only soldier brave enough to step forward and light Heracles’s funeral pyre, winning the hero’s bow as a reward – has spent 10 years on an island, abandoned by Odysseus on the way to Troy. ![]() Photograph: Helen Murrayįirst performed in 409BC, Sophocles’ drama, one of his lesser-performed plays, focuses on three soldiers. ‘The role is extraordinary – and usually a man gets to do it’ … Lesley Sharp as Philoctetes in rehearsals. ![]()
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