The Archer from Malis

Reviewed by Gray Palmer
Griot Theatre at the Lounge Theatre
Through May 22

RECOMMENDED

The Archer from Malis, now playing at the Lounge Theatre, is a delightful re-telling of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, adapted and directed by Griot Theatre’s artistic director Malik B. El-Amin. The original play, a prize-winner in 409 BC, glows on the dark shelf of lesser-known classics, frightening in its images of mysterious injury, and challenging in the power of its concern for the scapegoat.

Griot Theatre has a mission of redress for marginalized people (and gods, evidently) of all kinds. Direct political engagement, or political intervention, is separable from what art does, but it is one of the heartening things that art can do. And an appeal to poetry’s supreme fictions doesn’t have to be obviously affirmative, or obviously supreme. Often the great stuff isn’t: Lautreamont (wicked), Artaud (more-than-mad), Beckett — each hilarious, invigorating, refreshing. But here, with The Archer from Malis, Griot under the direction of El-Amin directly harmonizes and heals.

Poet Seamus Heaney, who also wrote a version of this play, says, “…if our given experience is a labyrinth, then its impassability is countered by the poet’s imagining some equivalent of the labyrinth and bringing himself and the reader through it.”

This is also what good acting always does. And really good actors do it by their simple, complete presence. El-Amin’s casting is terrific. The production features a performance by a superb Regan Linton, a performer unconstrained by her wheel-chair — actually somehow freed into great physicality — in the role of Neoptolema, daughter of Achilles (re-imagined from the male Neoptolemus).

The story begins with Hercules (a droll Reginald James), who has retired from wrestling with Tritons, breaking the horn of Acheloos and other such labors. Now garbed in a shiny suit, he seems to be the surveillance administrator at a celestial command post, reporting directly to Mother Zeus (a dignified Elmira Rahim).

The surveillance team is watching the island of Lemnos. Ten years ago, Philoctetes (Lester Purry, a fine fit for this character) was abandoned here. The reason: He had been bitten on the foot by a snake and the wound was terrifying, — it wouldn’t heal and it didn’t kill.

At the time, Philoctetes, a master archer and possessor of the bow of Hercules, had been one the commanders of a fleet en route to Troy. But his wound frightened the other warriors. So Oddysea (the fierce Leilani Smith, in another gender change) convinced the division to abandon him on Lemnos. Further trouble: According to divine authority, the Trojan War could not be won without the bow of Hercules.

Now Oddysea brings Neoptolema to Lemnos to act as intermediary. Oddysea knows she is hated by Philoctetes. She’s right. Her plan is to use Neoptolema to trick him into giving up the bow while she hides nearby. And this plan disgusts young Neoptolema.

Odyssea is the bad guy here, rather like a corporate leader of an institutionalized war-machine (perhaps a Cheney), urging Neoptolema to get her hands dirty for the cause.

I mustn’t fail to mention the funny, charming Rosemary Brownlow who plays two roles: a youthful soldier and a piratical captain.

How does it turn out? Don’t look it up if you don’t know. Pay the modest ticket price at and find out.

The simple design is by Nikki Eva Kentor, the good lighting by Donny Jackson, and the music accompanying Julio Hanson’s sound design is sweet. The great costumes are by Katherine Dehombre.

Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. ; Sun. 3 p.m., through May 22. (323) 960-7822, griottheatre.org/happeningnow.html. Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission.