Timon of Athens is one of Shakespeare’s least performed plays yet one it is also the play which no less than Karl Marx has agreed is most relevant to our modern capitalist society. Timon is a wealthy Athenian who is initially over-generous and materialistic but who loses track of his money and dies destitute. Overspending, debt accumulation, calls for austerity, Greek financial problems: it is all very familiar for 2012 audiences.
At part of the Globe to Globe season, Germany’s Bremer Shakespeare Company production is witty, touching and playful and makes much of Timon‘s continuing relevance. As the audience come into the theatre Timon and his friends are already on stage, mingling, with their music playing in the backgound. They wear tuxes, flip-flops and smoke cigars: it is like we have wondered into a Bullingdon Club social, a party of rich eccentrics. This feeling is confirmed when the play begins as Michael Meyer’s jubilant Timon welcomes us and his friends to his party, arms spread wide open at the front of the stage. It is one of several moments where the company demonstrates their skill at working in the space, knowing how and when to engage the encompassing Globe audience. The wealthy Athenian reveals a piece of commissioned art – a trampoline which takes up most of the stage. The image of the rich young men bouncing on the ‘art’, tuxes flapping in the air, getting closer and closer to the Globe stage roof perfectly encapsulates their carefree extravagance.
But there are hints of the tragedy to come. Erika Spalke’s Flaminius is Timon’s tweed-jacketed, glasses-wearing geeky servant. She pops out periodically from underneath the trampoline, laptop in hand, to remind her master of his mounting debts. Appemantus, played with energy and wit by Petra-Janina Schultz, is the cynical misanthrope who warns Timon his friends are false. It is the subtle characterisation of Meyer’s Timon, though, that really foreshadows the devastation ahead. Whilst his friends are oblivious buffoons, he shows flashes of touching sensitivity. When Gunnar Haberland’s Ventidius sinks to the floor at news of his father’s death, Meyer cushions his fall, holding his friend and soothingly stroking his hair. Meyer is spellbound and moved in response to his artist’s beautiful masque dance. He shows us that Timon feels deeply, well before his inevitable downfall.
Timon is very much a play of two halves: wealth, then destitution. (And also two playwrights, as most academics agree that Thomas Middleton was Shakespeare’s collaborator on this work). In this production the shift is dynamic and meaningful. Learning that his so-called friends will not lend him money, the bankrupt Timon overturns his trampoline. The place where Flaminius popped out from to warn about debt is exposed, the master can no longer ignore his financial reality. Meyer strips his tux off and, naked, rages against the world, devoid of all material wealth, entirely vulnerable.
The company show a keen ability to detect text which would be enhanced and clarified by stage business. Scenes where Flaminius goes to each of his master’s friends to ask for loans only to be refused have the potential to be repetitive and lose momentum. In this production these scenes are transformed using snippets of pre-recorded dialogue, mime and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’. With sophisticated characterisation, creative staging choices and witty interpretation, Bremer Shakespeare Company prove that Timon of Athens is an undeservedly neglected play. The upcoming production at the National Theatre has much to live up to.
