Theater Review: ARISTOTLE/ALEXANDER (Company of Angels)

Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.
— Aristotle

When you have endless arts options to choose from every day, you eventually develop simple, blunt, sometimes arbitrary, rules to help decide what to see. One of mine: avoid titles with weird punctuation. Had I stuck to that rule, I would have missed Alex Lyras’s absorbing new play, Aristotle/Alexander, now at Company of Angels through May 4.

Andrew Byron as Aristotle and Nicholas Clary as Alexander the Great

As the play begins, King Philip II of Macedon is off fighting wars. His fourth wife and de facto ruler of Macedon, Olympias, stays home with their son and heir apparent, Alexander. Philip has arranged for Aristotle to come and be Alexander’s teacher. Meanwhile, Isocrates expresses his reservations that Aristotle will take advantage of the arrangement. Prince Alexander at this point is 14 years old. Impulsive and convinced of his own divinity, he is more interested in Hephaestion’s butt than in fulfilling his duty to produce an heir. Aristotle comes and immediately pokes holes in Alexander’s views, beginning with disputing the veracity of the Iliad, which Alexander adores. The bulk of the play then imagines the kinds of discussions the two might have had, such as religion, governance, math, biology, all while navigating the delicate relationships that plague powerful people.

Nicholas Clary as Alexander the Great

This may sound like a tedious two-person play, but Lyras’s writing is dense, playful, and full of always-fascinating machinations. His characters constantly reveal different sides of themselves, and the actors relish playing these meaty people. Displaying deep research and extensive quoting from ancient texts, this play about the past feels very much like a play about today. Multiple times throughout the night, I and other audience members gasped in recognition that old issues are still current issues. However, and this is one of the play’s strengths, it never becomes a “message” play. We may recognize today’s news, but we barely have a chance to mull when the play flies off to another interesting subject. We, not the play, have to make the connections. I liked this refusal to pander, even though it made some of the play difficult to follow. You don’t need to know ancient Greek history in depth, but if you’re rusty on your Sophocles, Socrates, Isophocles, and Isocrates (quick! which one is fake?), you’re going to get tripped up. Helpfully, the play’s website offers some reading, should you want to brush up beforehand.

Nicholas Clary as Alexander the Great and Elyse Levesque as Queen Olympias

Nicholas Clary is quite authentic as teenage Alexander, confident in his superiority but also showing youthful vulnerability. Andrew Byron is know-it-all Aristotle, just as confident that he is the smartest person who ever lived. Elyse Levesque plays Queen Olympias without making her a devil-woman; ruthless, but with a strong moral core. John Kapelos is the suspicious Isocrates, a name which I heard as, “I, Socrates.” Characters would talk to him, so I thought him to be Socrates, then they would turn around and say that Socrates died a long time ago. I was so confused. Even so, I enjoyed spending time with these actors playing these characters.

John Kapelos as Isocrates

Lyras also directs, keeping the play within a brisk two hours. Joel Daavid’s set is modest but detailed. Matt Richter does convincing environmental lighting cues, but his video, while inoffensive, is literal, washed out, and, frankly, looks cheap. I would have preferred more of his lighting. Paula Davis’s costumes are simple and felt period-appropriate.

Andrew Byron as Aristotle

First introduced at the Getty Villa Theater Lab last year, Aristotle/Alexander offers no escape from our world, hinting at a tantalizing “what if?” about our current leaders. Alexander may have been an impulsive, entitled, cocky brat, but he was a good kid that needed those closest to him to stand up to him and guide him to mature into a good man. Where are those people today?

Education d'Alexandre par Aristote by French engraver and illustrator Charles Laplante.
From Louis Figuier's Vie des savants illustres: Savants de l'antiquité (tome 1), Paris, 1866

photos courtesy of the production

Aristotle/Alexander
Company of Angels, 1350 San Pablo Street
105 minutes, no intermission
Sat at 8; Sun at 3 (dark April 20); Sat at 3 (April 19)
ends on May 4, 2025
for tickets, visit Company of Angels and Aristotle/Alexander

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA