You think Socrates was a saintly sage, unfairly executed in democratic Athens? Think again!

SYNOPSIS:

Socrates, the great philosopher, often depicted as a saintly sage, is here re-imagined as a George Carlin-like gadfly, an annoying Larry David type, somewhat channeling Dennis Miller in his reactionary attitudes. He had been a stonemason and soldier in the Pelopponesian War, the latter entitling him to have two wives. Eventually he was charged, in his old age, with corrupting the youth of Athens and disavowing the gods of the city. Defiant before the jury, he was not only convicted but provoked them to sentence him to death.

According to a book on the subject by I.F. Stone, the "corruption" of the youth he was charged with was actually in having influenced men in earlier years who grew up to become "The Thirty" who took over rule of Athens and bloodily held power until eventually deposed. Socrates was somewhat unfairly depicted as one of the rhetoric-teaching Sophists in Aristophanes's comedy "The Clouds"--but it is clear that he used words and "logic" to discomfit interlocutors, and he held democracy as instituted in Athens in some contempt.

After conviction and sentencing, he complied with the outcome by drinking deadly hemlock, despite his entourage's pleas to him to allow them to spirit him out of the city, to safety.

This stage play is a farce, with many anachronistic, pop-cultural references such as to Firesign Theater, rock music, films, Groucho Marx, etc.