The Reduced Shakespeare Company refer to some of the Bard’s minor works as ‘hardly crap at all’ and reviewers and directors alike are keen on describing certain plays as ‘difficult’. It would be impossible for all 37 to be equally good but such is Shakespeare’s fame that even his lesser plays are given fairly regular outings. Shakespeare is unique in this respect, even among other Titans of English literature: it is to be hoped that fans of Charles Dickens will join their hero in heaven before lavish Beeb adaptations of Dombey & Son or Our Mutual Friend clutter up the Christmas schedules.
Whilst you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear you can usually get something half way decent if you throw enough resources at it. Timon of Athens, currently at the Globe, is a demanding guest who needs the best of everything if he is to give a reasonable account of himself: director, designer, composer, choreographer, actors, acrobats, frequent costume changes and a full on sky rig extending around and above the auditorium for aerial entrances and exits.
Rich Athenian Timon (Simon Paisley Day) wastes all his money on false friends who forsake him when his debts mount and he needs their help. Timon flees Athens to live as a misanthropic hermit in the wilderness where he stumbles upon a hoard of treasure which he gives away in the hope that it will make his enemies as miserable as him. There is much to resonate with a contemporary audience in these days of credit crunch and conspicuous consumption.
Lucy Bailey’s lively production exploits the wry humour in the play with panache; particularly the long prose exchanges between Timon and the caustic philosopher Apemantus, a tricky character whose simmering rage is ably sustained throughout by Bo Paraj. The parallels between Timon’s fall and Christ’s last days are picked out with a pleasing subtlety that almost escaped me. My fault not the director’s.
‘Health and Safety’ has us all by the throat these days and does not spare the Globe. The net suspended above the stage, from which the vultures descend, is a wonderful spectacle but all too often it resembles a climbers’ conference and the constant clasping and unclipping of karabiners is an irritating distraction.
Timon of Athens at the Globe Theatre is a better production than it is a play but that is no reason not to go and see it. The second half is particularly good.
Timon of Athens
by William Shakespeare
His sharpest satire
26 July – 3 October
Directed by Lucy Bailey
Designed by William Dudley
