Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens Page 26
How far these comments reflected the prevailing mood of the times, how far the effect of the intimate playing space, and how far the success of the actual production, is unclear. It is worth noting, however, that Desmond Pratt, who loved both play and production ("a very fine performance of a great classic tragic role"), nevertheless thought that "the last two acts, with their famous invective, [were] too ferocious verbally for such a small place,"147 and the next RSC production reverted to the main house.
Daniels and his designer, Chris Dyer, chose to give the play a Japanese setting. The first half was bright and light, with square wooden pillars rising from a floor of wide scrubbed boards, while the guests sat on the floor at long low tables, "appropriate furniture of simple but beautiful design that seems rich even in isolation,"148 to eat sushi "with much fluttering of napkins and chopsticks."149 Headbands and short haircuts prevailed throughout, and the "voluminous costumes [were] bright and attractive,"150 wide-sleeved linen kimonos with colorful trims, and red samurai-style armor for the soldiers. They were very striking against the bare set. The masque, limited by size of both cast and playing space, featured two geisha girls and a presumably Japanese "Cupid" whose headdress, neck decorations, body paint, and ankle bells seemed rather to indicate an Aztec Indian.
This traditional Japanese setting, arbitrary though the choice might seem at first, was not merely visually appealing; it provided the play with the strong underpinning of a society distant from us in time and space but yet with recognizable values and clear rituals, "a society that expresses itself by its customs ... [Timon's] mistake, perhaps, is to place too great a store by the rituals of greeting and communal feasting."151
The second half was set in "a nautical wilderness,"152 "upon the very hem o'th'sea" (5.4.76): the stage was hung with ragged fishing nets, "a tangle of rigging and tattered cloth,"153 with a soundtrack of screeching seagulls, waves, and distantly howling animals. Roger Warren complained that here the "production seemed to lose its line: stylisation gave way to a kind of realism,"154 yet this contrast between the highly formal and ritualized human world of the city and the natural world of beasts outside was surely deliberate. This setting was imaginatively utilized in Act 5, enabling Timon to die onstage but also remain unseen during the final sequence. Robert Cushman, in the Observer, found this conclusion very effective:
Timon says that he will make his grave by the sea, and having spoken his last words, two scenes before the final curtain, he pulls a net over his head and just sits there. It is an oddly satisfying finish, lending shape and definition to a play that could just peter out, and Richard Pasco gives it the authentic accent of finality.155
In contrast to Schlesinger's reading in 1965, Richard Pasco and director Ron Daniels had chosen to slant the play more toward personal tragedy than social satire. Both feasting and masque were dignified:
There is no riotous excess in this hushed, smiling ceremony nor a corrupt society later: the thumb-nail satirical sketches of the three false friends were played very soberly, without a hint of caricature. Timon himself was neither opulent benefactor nor foolish prodigal, but a sweet-natured, smilingly courteous host.156
11. RSC 1980, directed by Ron Daniels. In contrast to 1965, both feasting and masque were dignified; "There is no riotous excess in this hushed, smiling ceremony": Richard Pasco as Timon.
As Timon, Pasco had been an unexpected choice; Barber noted in surprise, "the role of literature's most famous of misanthropes has gone to that most winning of actors, Richard Pasco."157 However, both his verse-speaking and his interpretation won vivid and unqualified praise from almost all reviewers. Geoffrey Wheatcroft observed:
Timon's likeability is not necessarily easy to convey. Richard Pasco gets it just right. He teeters on the edge of a camp silliness--the decadent Athenians, poet, painter and jeweller, go right over the edge, which is as it should be--but never becomes insufferable. His Timon is a man of ... charm, with much to forgive and always forgiven [by the audience].158
While Michael Billington commented:
Mr Pasco gives the tirades a mordant vivacity. With his red-rimmed eyes, patchwork costume, and habit of gnawing passionately at root vegetables, he is the picture of desolation: poor forked animal with vast reserves of hate. The barbed exchanges with Apemantus ... have a stinging irony. Mr Pasco ... proves he can do stark hate and cornered despair. When he finally expires under a huge net, it seems the only logical end for a character who finds life a mortal sickness.159
Again the one note of criticism came from Warren, who pointed out, with justification, that "this suggested a Timon more at home with the middle of humanity" than with "the extremity of both ends."160 His was, however, a lone dissenting voice, here explicitly contradicted:
It was the performance of a lifetime. What he succeeded in conveying so brilliantly was Timon's essential vulnerability. He makes us realise that genuine though Timon's goodness and generosity are, they are accompanied by a craving for love--what Shakespeare calls "a dream of friendship"--that inevitably contains the seeds of disappointment. It is this, Richard Pasco shows us, which makes Timon's complete and absolute change of heart so convincing. He is, inevitably, a man of extremes. As the philosopher Apemantus so rightly tells him: "The middle of humanity thou never knewest." The misanthropy ... is the reverse-side of the coin of benevolence, and there is an element of morbidity and even pride in both attitudes of mind.161
Among the smaller parts, John Carlisle as Apemantus was much praised for his "lovely study ... of a cool beaky professional cynic,"162 "faultlessly polite in the delivery of his endless discourtesies,"163 and Arthur Kohn for his "sturdy supporting performance ... as Timon's devoutly loyal steward,"164 while "Alcibiades' parallel discomfiture at the hands of people he has served well [came] across with great force ... James Hazeldine play[ed] the warrior with great finesse, an action-man alternative to Timon's abrasively philosophical stasis."165
Billington's review concluded that the production "[made him] hope we do not have to wait until 1995 before we see [Timon] again."166 In fact, despite the unequivocal success of Daniels's production, it took even longer. It was not until 1999 that Timon was presented again, though this time it was back in the main house, after a gap of thirty-four years.
1999: Jacobean Moral Fable with Twentieth-Century Resonance
Gregory Doran has called Timon "the most contemporary of all Shakespeare's plays using a mixture of cynicism, humour and harsh brutality ... particularly resonant for us at the end of the 20th century."167 Yet, as Michael Billington explained in the Guardian: "Doran holds this difficult play together ... not least by suggesting that it is a moral fable about the court of James I in which conspicuous consumption is combined with a debt-culture and a gaudy, gay sexuality."168 Nicholas de Jongh concurred: "Timon is surely a coded and pathetic version of [King] James, driven by an uncontrollable urge to spend, spend, spend in all the wrong places and on all the wrong people."169
Using this seventeenth-century context as a starting point, Doran and designer Stephen Brimson Lewis expanded outward eclectically. The costumes were "flamboyant classical-renaissance punk,"170 "gorgeous, often remarkably modern quasi-Jacobean attire,"171 and the characters "fashion victors rather than fashion victims."172 Settings revealed senators in Edwardian wing-armchairs ("great chairs of ease," 5.4.11) beneath green glass lampshades; one false friend was wheeled on in an old-fashioned wheelchair; others were discovered in a modern sauna that yet had classical resonances. In this allmale society, the banquets had "a kitsch, high-camp quality."173 The action unfolded to the accompaniment of a score by Duke Ellington, originally written for a Stratford Ontario Timon in the 1960s: this "edgy, evocative music"174 provided "passages of hot jazz luxury and softly aching blues,"175 while for Paul Taylor in the Independent, "the mockingly sleazy jazz underscore[d] ... the trashy decadence" of Timon's world, establishing a "droll satiric tone."176
This bold interpretation and the unexpected juxtapositions found favor wit
h the majority of critics: "All the joyous fascination and intrigue of a genuine rediscovery";177 "A production bang on the money,"178 were typical responses. However, inevitably there were dissenters: Nigel Cliff in The Times complained that the production "play[ed] largely for laughs,"179 and the Evening Standard headlines were repeatedly critical--"Panto Arrives Early" in 1999;180 "Hippie Timon Goes Over the Top" in 2000.181
Lewis's minimal set consisted mainly of a large planked disc. At the back, a brick wall with an immense central door dominated most of Acts 1-3, though for the banquet sequence glittering drapes in dark rich colors hung swathed across the stage, lit by fire bowls and flickering torches, with the feasters seated on informal benches at low tables. Cupid was flown in on a harness, shooting at Timon with a trick arrow; the drapes were then drawn back to reveal a carefully posed stage tableau--two Amazons on pedestals, two more seated on flown trapezes, with Cupid forming the triangle's apex. Costume here consisted merely of "thongs ... little black masks and large white feather wings."182 Far from being a masque of women, these were clearly men in drag and the dance provocatively homoerotic, the sexual tension leading finally to fighting.
The second half was bleak and exposed. A giant orange sun with an eclipsed moon at its center hung over an empty stage, where a few planks had been roughly levered up to reveal a rectangular pit, which, as in 1965, became Timon's "cave." This, however, was far more makeshift than its 1965 equivalent, and much smaller; it became gradually obvious that Timon had dug his own grave. The action here was played as a single unbroken continuum up until Timon's death, with Timon himself scarcely stepping out of the pit. He was initially "near-naked and defenceless, terribly burned, dehydrated and vocally cracked,"183 consumed by a violent anger. However, Flavius' visit enabled him to weep, be held, and trust (marginally) again; thereafter he gradually reached a calm which allowed him to die in some peace at the end. The final sequence was triggered by blood-red lighting and smoke pumped forcefully across the stage as Alcibiades descended from above on a lighting bridge, negotiating with the Senators from a great height. His promise of mercy, received initially with relief, was qualified by his agreement to punish only the "enemies of Timon's and mine own" (5.4.65); those onstage suddenly registered that they themselves all fell into either or both of those categories. The closing tableau showed "Alcibiades above, the Steward centre stage and Apemantus downstage by the proscenium wall ... a silent triptych of Timon's friends, widely separate, each ... remembering Timon in his own way."184
These three minor roles were all strongly played. John Woodvine as Flavius was far more prominent than most stewards, bringing on Timon's epitaph at the end, for instance, and holding the play together with "steely and compassionate stoicism."185 Rupert Penry-Jones was a young, blond, and ruthless Alcibiades, who "clearly indicate[d that he would], like Augustus Caesar, end up in total fascist control of a city-state that ha[d] gone soft round the edges."186 "The most eye-catching performance came from Richard McCabe, whose Apemantus, in shabby 20th century gear ... provide[d] a droll running commentary ... setting the comic tone for the production." 187
Timon himself was played by Michael Pennington, stepping in halfway through rehearsals to take over from a sick Alan Bates. His was an immensely successful bravura performance, summed up by Alastair Macaulay:
Timon suits [Pennington's] fierce intellect, his incisive wit, his unlovable coldness. And oh! That voice! Through pianissimo and fortissimo, from tenor heights to bass depths, in phrases of effortless length and full of the greatest internal dynamic contrast, how that voice can melt, grate, charm, burn, chide, fulminate, snarl, tremble, think.188
Paul Taylor analyzed the performance further:
The excellence of Pennington's performance lies in the way he reveals the psychological continuities between the hero's apparently opposite manifestations: the convivial host in flowing gowns and the loin-clothed outsider snarling like a wild animal. Even when acting the life and soul of the party or reducing himself to tears at the thought of togetherness, Pennington's Timon has the abstract air of a congenital loner who may actually be using philanthropy as a means of fending off real intimacy and emotional equality. When his "friends" let him down, there is something ecstatic about this.189
Pennington himself would have agreed with this assessment; he described the play as "a subtly sardonic satire ... [and] its central character a fascinating study in benevolent neurosis ... [with] a narcissism that holds human contact at bay by wildly parodying it"; like Penelope Gilliatt in 1980 he also found himself unexpectedly "exhilarated" by "Timon's benighted ecstasy."190
In Conclusion
Charles Graves, reviewing the 1965 production in the Scotsman, provided a perceptive, balanced, and still partly relevant explanation for Timon's infrequent staging, though it is worth reiterating here that the play is no longer regarded as an unfinished work, but a collaboration with Thomas Middleton:
There are of course reasons for [Timon's unpopularity]. The Shakespeare that the general public loves is still the late Victorian Shakespeare of the gentle comedies of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and a few of the romantic histories (notably Richard II and Henry V) with, of course, Hamlet ... There is a second reason why Timon is seldom acted. It lacks variety, has no underplot and contains evidence which points to Shakespeare having left it unfinished. To counterbalance its monotony of theme there is, of course, an amazing variety of language in its closely-packed imagery.191
Despite all this, critical reactions to productions of Timon have repeatedly expressed high levels of praise for the play in performance, and surprise at the degree of neglect it has suffered. Its themes continue to speak to the twenty-first century and it has been proved to work as both tragedy and satire; it seems appropriate to close by paraphrasing Billington and hope we will not have to wait till 2033 before Timon is seen on the main stage again.
However, the final word should go to James Fenton, who concluded his 1980 review in the Sunday Times, "The production left me with a feeling of intense and abiding excitement, mingled with an indefinable frustration. Not an inappropriate response, when I thought about it, to an unfinished work of Shakespeare."192
THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: AN INTERVIEW WITH GREGORY DORAN
Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming associate director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as associate and subsequently chief associate director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. His 1999 RSC production of Timon of Athens starred Michael Pennington as Timon and transferred to the Barbican the following year.
Timon's not an easy play and not one of Shakespeare's most popular; what was it about it that attracted you? Do you think it could be said to have contemporary relevance and did you try to capitalize on that at all?
GD: It wasn't, as it is with some plays, an immediate instinct that this play grabbed me in a visceral way. Having by that point in my career done both Titus Andronicus and All Is True/Henry VIII I found it really interesting looking at Shakespeare plays which didn't have a huge back-catalogue of performances, where you weren't weighed down by precedents quite so much as you can be with the more familiar plays. With Shakespeare, to some extent, you cannot do it in isolation; you are always in some sense doing it in reaction to other productions you've seen. There was something about tackling uncharted territory that was interesting and had proved fruitful. I had seen Trevor Nunn's production at the Young Vic with David Suchet as Timon, and I'd seen Jonathan Pryce do it on the TV as part of the BBC Shakespeare series. The brilliance of Trevor Nunn's production, which had set the second half in a junkyard of crushed
cars, was to place the play very directly in the modern world and to point up its relevance to the prevailing obsession with banking and money. I wanted to retain the play as a metaphor. In other words, as Shakespeare chooses the metaphor of ancient Athens to talk about his own world, I didn't want to put it into modern dress because I thought that pointing out the parallels might deny a more universal resonance.
Rereading the play recently I felt admiring of it, but I didn't find myself happy to go back to it. I felt that there's disgust in the play, in a way similar to Coriolanus. It makes it not necessarily a comfortable play to live with for very long. The imagery is so rotten with disease and infection and so crowded with a menagerie of animals, from asses to flies to apes. You can plunder it for insults; it's a wonderful articulation or expression of revulsion and disgust. Apemantus says at one point, "The strain of man's bred out / Into baboon and monkey." There is probably no finer diatribe on the moral degeneracy of mankind than Timon of Athens, but that doesn't necessarily make it a play to love, so I'm not surprised by its lack of popularity. When we did it in 1999 it was the first time the Company had done it in the main house since 1965. It sustained itself in the main house and people were delighted to come and see it, but I felt they were ticking it off their list rather than having a passion for the play. On the other hand, in rereading it my respect for the play came back and indeed I think it does work. I think the metaphor of the selfishness and corruption of society is endlessly applicable, whether you are specific, as Trevor Nunn was in the Young Vic production, or as we tried to be by allowing the metaphor to be read however you wanted to apply it. I think it still stands as a statement on the corruption of mankind: there will always be Flavius characters who have integrity and are good; there will always be the Apemantus malcontent characters who have a clearer perspective on what is really going on in the world; and there will always be delusional characters like Timon.