Having already seen all of Shakespeare’s plays performed
live, we get excited when we have a chance to see one of the plays that we have seen only once. We recently had this
opportunity as we went downtown to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) to see our second ever production of Timon of
Athens.
The imported star of the show, who played Timon, was veteran
British/Irish/Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid.
Mr. McDiarmid is a wonderful actor with a huge list of stage and screen
credits on his CV. He also (to me) is
the spitting personification of Montgomery Burns, the arch nemesis on the long
running US TV cartoon The Simpsons. If ever The
Simpsons were to do a live “reboot,” then Ian McDiarmid is the man to play
Monty Burns. Mr. McDiarmid also has the
fortune (or misfortune) to have had a rather large and important role in an
extremely successful movie series. He
gave a great performance on the Saturday we saw the play, especially in the
scenes where Timon spews his rage on humanity.
Timon of Athens is
not done very often and probably for very good reasons. It is not one of the Bard’s best. For those who have not seen it (and even for
readers of this blog that would be a lot of you), the basic plot is that Timon
is a very wealthy and generous business man who lives in Athens.
He has lots of friends who are very quick to borrow money from him and
eat at his table. It turns out, however,
that Timon is not all that great a businessman after all: he is
actually broke. When it becomes clear
that he is broke and needs their help, his so-called friends desert him like rats off a sinking
ship. Then Timon literally stumbles onto
another fortune, and his friends suddenly rediscover their love of Timon. But
Timon, apparently having learned his lesson, will have nothing to do with them.
Timon is an interesting character. At first he seems a bit over zealous. He throws money around, constantly pointing
out how good it is to help friends, how his friends would do the same for him,
and how great life is with good friends.
After he is exposed as being broke and is ultimately betrayed by his
so-called friends, he throws a series of fits (for which Mr McDiarmid rose
eloquently to the challenge). Timon is
forced to realize that he was wrong, that money can’t buy friends and he’s
better off without them. However, he
seems to be the only one that changes.
Every other character is flat, flat, flat.
Although each of the dramatis personae are given different names, they
might as well be called Parasite 1,
Parasite 2 ,etc., etc..
This production at the CST, like the last one we saw (1997,
at Shakespeare Repertory, the precursor to the CST), was a modern dress
version. The stage was a simple black
setting with a table for all of Timon’s dinner parties. Both productions involved a trio of dancing
girls. Perhaps this was meant to
symbolize the decadence that wealth brings?
We were in our usual seats (earned through 18 years of subscribing to
the same theater) in the front row on the right side of the center section. Thankfully the director did not stage a lot
of actors standing on the corner of the thrust stage as directors are wont to
do, so I did not have a lot of blocked views of the action further upstage.
I enjoyed the production as I enjoy just about every
production at the CST. As I have made
clear, Ian McDiarmid did a great job, especially in the second half of the play
after Timon is broken and angry. The rest of the
actors were admirable in their roles including the always enjoyable Kevin
Gudahl. However, you can’t make bricks
out of straw. This is one of those plays
that if anyone else’s name besides Shakespeare’s was on the title page, it
would not be performed.
I am glad I had a chance to see Ian McDiarmid in this
role. I would love to see him in one of
the better Shakespeare plays. Perhaps he
could be recruited to play Claudius or maybe even Lear? The thought makes me think one thing . . .
ehhhhhxcellent!
