Paul Xuereb reviews the screening of one of The Bard’s most rarely put up plays, Timon of Athens.
Shakespeare aficionados must be grateful to London’s National Theatre for mounting a major production of Timon of Athens, which I saw in a broadcast received at St James Cavalier. This is a play that is rarely performed, and not just in our time, for there is no record of any performances in Shakespeare’s lifetime, the first recorded performance dating to the 1670s.
A fable about the unreflecting use of wealth, the boundless greed for money and the reluctance to let go of it once it is obtained
Nicholas Hytner has set the play in our own time when so many billionaires rise and quite a few of them crash. His first scene shows Timon inaugurating a great new gallery of art endowed by him. The stage is filled with colleagues, so-called friends and creative artists – a poet whose vanity is exceedingly absurd (Nich Sampson, a good satirical portrait) and a painter (Penny Layden, whose interpretation is more subtle) – and is dominated by a huge painting (an El Greco painting now in London’s National Gallery unless I am mistaken) showing an angry Christ driving the sellers away from the temple precincts. This ties up with Hytner’s own description of the play as a fable. The angry Timon becomes a Christ with no love in his heart.
It is a fable about the unreflecting use of wealth, the boundless greed for money and the reluctance to let go of it once it is obtained.
Simon Russell Beale, the great actor who plays the title role, now without his former expensive suits and dressed like many who sleep rough, has no intention of resurrecting his former wealth. His misanthropy, his utter contempt for all men, makes him give the money he found to harlots, thieves and robbers, to enable them to go on preying on their fellows, and the ingots go to Alcibiades, the rebel general who intends to attack Athens and destroy its government.
Only a meeting with Flavia (Deborah Findlay), his former and very loyal steward, brings a momentary lull in his tirades as he proclaims her “one honest person” in the universe.
Not even his encounter with Apemantus (a waspish Hilton McRae), the cynic philosopher who in former days strove always unsuccessfully to rouse Timon to a sense of the corruption of those around him, is of comfort to Timon even if what he says now chimes in perfectly with what Timon now believes. He actually advises Timon to give his money to the beasts – the bad ones of the world – “to be rid of the men”.
Timon throws a stone at him, stating that “all the villains that do stand by thee are pure”, and is left alone to meet and abuse other visitors.
Russell Beale shows his true worth in portraying Timon in his misanthropy. While it is not possible for any actor to create much variety in Timon’s long series of speeches and exchanges, Russell Beale makes sure there is enough variety in his vocal dynamics and tones to prevent his scenes from becoming tedious.
Lynette Edwards (Sempronia), Paul Bentall (Lucullus) and Ventidius (Tom Robertson) create sharply delineated portraits of false friends very inventive in creating reasons for not lending their former benefactor the money he do desperately needs. The play ends with Alcibiades’ defeat of the Athenians, having made good use of Timon’s gold, and his acquisition of a controlling power in the city’s government reaches ironically a compromise with the Athenians that includes a controlling interest for Alibiades in the government. The news then arrives of the death of Timon, who has previously written for himself an epitaph proclaiming his never-ending hatred of mankind.