Timon (Kathryn Hunter, aloft) is celebrated at one of her lavish parties, in Simon Godwin’s production of Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens.
There are numerous challenges in staging Timon of Athens, one of Shakespeare’s least produced works (perhaps not even performed during his own lifetime). It’s an invective-filled and disjointed morality tale, a story of a profligate spender let down by false friends who turns to excessive isolation and bitterness. Probably coauthored with Thomas Middleton, Timon is usually described as deficient in some way or so odd as to defy categorization: words such as “baffling,” “curious,” “unfinished,” “abandoned,” and “mistake” populate major works of criticism. Even its place in the First Folio is dubious, as textual oddities arguably demonstrate it was not originally intended to be included among Shakespeare’s collected works.
Timon (right) speaks to her loyal steward Flavius (John Rothman) when he comes to visit her in seclusion. Photographs by Henry Grossman.
Coherent and compelling productions of the play are possible, however: Barry Edelstein’s 2011 production for the Public Lab and Robert Richmond’s stellar 2017 production at the Folger Theatre, in Washington, D.C., come to mind. Theater for a New Audience’s current production was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2018, under the direction of Simon Godwin, who also in 2018 directed a magnificent Antony and Cleopatra at London’s National Theatre. This Timon has changed the gender of both Timon and the Athenian captain Alcibiades, a welcome choice in a play that has only two named female characters, both prostitutes with a handful of lines.
While the first act manages to be clear and engaging, the second act is muddled and plodding, and suffers from some puzzling choices—by the time one of the characters is drinking Timon’s urine and offering it to the audience, any attempt at achieving something powerful has been squandered, much like Timon’s wealth.
Kathryn Hunter, a frequent presence at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in recent years, takes on the role of Timon but is never able to create any semblance of psychological or emotional believability in the character (no easy task, admittedly). It’s a big performance, which in some ways the character calls for, but much like the production itself, which includes singing, dance, and a variety of grotesque antics, the quieter moments are drowned out by the noise, and there is no real insight into the play’s fundamental questions or mysteries.
Timon is a wealthy Athenian prone to excessive generosity and gift-giving. She is surrounded by avaricious friends, who are lavishly entertained at her estate. Despite explicit warnings from her faithful steward Flavius (John Rothman) and the Cynical philosopher Apemantus (Arnie Burton)—a kind of roving and tolerated source of moral castigations and embittered musings—Timon spends far beyond her means and, when she faces ruin, her friends refuse to help her. Timon is as extreme in her reaction to this as she was in her spending: she forsakes and curses humanity and goes to live in the woods as Misanthropos, where she will rail against mankind. The subplot, which in the play involves a captain intent on conquering Athens after he is banished for objecting to the treatment of his soldiers, is transformed into an Occupy Wall Street–like movement led by the “activist” Alcibiades (Elia Monte-Brown).
False friends receive their comeuppance at Timon’s last feast.
The initial atmosphere of glittering decadence is well-established by set and costume designer Soutra Gilmour—it’s an apt touch that Timon wears a gold dress, as the corrosiveness of gold becomes the dominant motif in the second half. The secondary characters are cartoonishly superficial as written, and the production plays up their roles as satiric types. Perhaps the production’s best sequence is the simultaneous staging of three scenes of Timon’s servants asking her friends for money. The most compelling relationship in the play is the odd and rather hostile one between Timon and Apemantus, here portrayed as affectionate, with Apemantus fulfilling a role not unlike the “wise fool” of other Shakespeare plays (he’s somewhat unnecessarily depicted as “punk,” complete with Patti Smith T-shirt). Burton’s Apemantus is a performer, which is why he is tolerated by the group at dinner even as he excoriates them; in his asides, however, his care for Timon’s well-being is tenderly revealed.
The second half is structured as a series of visitations to Timon the misanthrope, here played as crude sketches. The great misanthropy contest between Timon and Apemantus is reduced to the two wrestling in the dirt. Furthermore, the grafting on of the populist rebellion is strained and confused (it requires some rewriting by Godwin and Emily Burns), and it’s never really clear what Timon’s role in all this is supposed to be. When Timon’s death is announced and her corpse carried onstage as everyone poses in a Pietà-like tableau, the self-seriousness feels unearned and strangely unmoving.
Timon of Athens runs through Feb. 9 at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and information, call (866) 811-4111 or visit tfana.org.
