Philoktetes

As in Sophocles’ tragedy of the same name, due to a foul-smelling wound Philoktetes is left behind on Lemnos by the Greeks as they advance on Troy. Years later, Odysseus and Neoptolemus wish to win back the outcast for a war, mainly because of his weapons. But Philoktetes claims to be someone else: the man they are looking for, he says, is dead. Three burnt-out officers besiege one another, with ploys and deceit, and aggressive talk about death and the underworld, in a fog of drugs and alcohol. The language flickers between Antiquity and the present day.