Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Godwin’s choice of directorial debut wasn’t a stretch. Godwin’s newly minted tenure at STC begins with a vivid and zesty restaging of his recently produced Timon of Athens, a cluttered morality play in original form which he’s cleverly smoothed over and corseted up into a fetchingly absurdist cri de coeur.
Godwin’s exuberant take on the rarely produced work is a coproduction with Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, in association with London’s Royal Shakespeare Company; his Timon has appeared on both stages to acclaim during the last 14 months.
A lot of that trumpeting was directed toward Olivier Award-winning actress Kathryn Hunter in the lead as Timon, who resurrects her peculiarly distinctive performance here. But I would credit the lion’s share of its success to Godwin’s reworking of the original text (along with editor Emily Burns) into a brisk, vivacious telling and the outstanding design elements.
Along with some notable cross-gendered casting (Timon is a man in the original work, based on Plutarch’s mytho-history)—a dubious but harmless practice more symptomatic of a self-distressed society than meeting any need—Godwin and Burns rearranged scenes and cut sizable chunks from the original, unified the inconsonant halves of the story as best they could and attempted to elevate the motivation of the main subplot concerning the soldier Alcibiades (Elia Monte-Brown) from vindictive personal revenge to the more tastefully accommodating populist insurgency for “the dispossessed.”
Godwin punched up the sensual expression of the work with the additions of composer Michael Bruce’s rhythmic score, Kristen Misthopoulos’s moody singing and dramatic flourishes like the substitution of a bloodbath for served dinner stones in the revenge banquet scene.
Timon of Athens closes March 22, 2020. DCTS details and tickets
The production is structured as a straightforward diptych of “before” and “after.” The first half of what’s ultimately a tragic realization begins as a toothsome comedy more akin to the satirists of a later generation. Timon is a wealthy and generous benefactor among the elite courtiers of Athens and, as the play opens, on a literally golden splurge of opulence at her expense, the self-interested flattery of her entourage is all too apparent. To her detriment, she cares not to know this truth and declares that “I am wealthy in my friends” when her lavish gift-giving reaches its material end and the creditors come calling. Cold dismissal and aggrieved incredulity to her pleas for help swiftly disabuse her. The cynic Apemantus (Arnie Burton) meant to be a voice of caution, passively attends Timon’s downfall.
The theatrical scene shifts in the second half of the play from Molière to Beckett as Timon has taken to the wasteland, trading her gold lame sheaths for sackcloth, her palace for a hole in the ground and her deluded sense of love for an exalted hatred of humanity. She philosophizes and rails like an ascetic Lear at visitors who seek to satisfy their various agendas, and when she unearths another fortune she bestows it to her faithful servant Flavius (John Rothman) instead of using it to subsidize the destruction of the city by Alcibiades’ warring rabble as written in the original text. She’d rather expire from this mean world and let the heavens fall where they may.
It all sounds pretty exciting and grand, but it’s considered one of Shakespeare’s problem plays for many reasons. The writing is uneven and thought to be unfinished, likely half written by somebody else and for all of these reasons inarguably defective compared with what it’s believed he was writing at that stage of his life—King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus.
[adsanity_rotating align=”aligncenter” time=”10″ group_id=”1455″ /]
Hunter has been the star attraction in previous productions. The diminutive actress holds an oddly fascinating focus in her portrayal of Timon. A bit awkward as the bon vivant and overflowing cup of largesse in the play’s first half, the power of her performance grows with her ease in the role of wretched exile in the second. Her sinewy expressiveness and remarkably throaty voice certainly command attention. Once set up as a wreck in the woods, she scrambles around the set like a spider monkey and delivers Timon’s uncompromising summations with a playful, derisive glee instead of what could’ve been a heavy slog. She truly connects in the moments of pitiable jest, such as when the pair of fools Poet (Yonatan Gebeyehu) and Painter (Zachary Fine) are made to eat and drink from nature’s bounty as the cost of admission. Her interactions with the audience (a well-employed technique throughout the production) are highlights of the show.
As for the rest of the cast, Shirine Babb, Dave Quay and Daniel Pearce are pleasingly funny as Timon’s freeloading former friends, the comic duo of Gebeyehu and Fine are delightful and Rothman imbues the play with an air of much-needed dignity and steadfastness. Monte-Brown is flat in the much-reduced Alcibiades role and the character of Apemantus is played as one of the more unappealingly flaccid guides in the Bard’s work. This slayer of posers comes off as a self-indulgent bike messenger.
The sets and costumes (Soutra Gilmour) are wow worthy, from the glittering decadence of Timon’s party hall and the tongue-in-cheek poshness of the fawners’ costumes to the post-intermission purgatory dominated by an extruding tree bough forewarning condemnation and a solitary grave-like pit for Timon to clamber in and out of and hold forth from.
Timon of Athens is not produced very much because it doesn’t live up to the standard we expect from the Shakespeare canon. The more credit to Godwin in patching it up and giving it life. It’s a vivification worth seeing, quarterbacked by Hunter’s offbeat performance and supported by the consistently impressive design work.
A serving of syrupy moralizing seasoned with bitter satire and nihilistic tragedy—it contains some of the darkest lines attributed to Shakespeare. Godwin’s Timon of Athens is more enjoyable than it should be.
Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. Edited by Emily Burns and Simon Godwin. Directed by Simon Godwin. Featuring Kathryn Hunter, Shirine Babb, Arnie Burton, Helen Cespedes, Liam Craig, Zachary Fine, Yonatan Gebeyehu, Adam Langdon, Kristen Misthopoulos, Elia Monte-Brown, Julia Ogilvie, Daniel Pearce, Dave Quay and John Rothman. Scenic and Costume design: Soutra Gilmour. Lighting design: Donald Holder. Sound design: Christopher Shutt. Composer: Michael Bruce. Music supervisor: Greg Jarrett. Choreographer: Jonathan Goddard. Stage manager: Joseph Smelser. Produced by Shakespeare Theatre Company and Theatre for a New Audience in association with The Royal Shakespeare Company. Reviewed by Roy Maurer.
What a great review. This article is a shining example of what I am trying to teach my budding theatergoers to write into their own theatrical reviews–to ground judgments in specific, unabashed interpretations of details in the play. To justify claims about performances with some indication of what urged the opinion. It would be wonderful to have Roy Maurer visit us in our online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic!