Thrice Twelfth Night

I have had three recent encounters with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.  Twelfth Night is one of the better comedies.  It starts with “If music be the food of love, play on” and includes many of the expected elements of the bard’s comedies: mistaken identities, misplaced love, secret marriages, drunken rogues, and a fool.

In December we made a family trip downtown to see Twelfth Night done at the Lincoln Park Conservatory by a group called Midsommer Flight.  Midsommer Flight began performing in the Chicago area by doing free Shakespeare in the summer.  In 2012 Artistic Director Beth Wolf first mounted a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In succeeding years the company did Romeo & Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing and the Scottish play.  All have been in the summer and all have been free.  I had seen Much Ado and the Scottish play before going to Twelfth Night, and all were great productions.  For the summer productions it’s bring your own chair and meal, and it’s general seating (which means come early for the best seat location).  This was the first year that Midsommer put on a play indoors.  The Lincoln Park Conservatory was a delightful place to see Twelfth Night, surrounded as we were by plants and vegetation in the middle of winter.  It was still free, but seating was limited so we had to reserve tickets as soon as the opportunity arose. The play included original music performed live.  A CD was for sale, so we got it, of course,  and have enjoyed listening to it at home. All of Midsommer Flight’s productions are free, so obviously you can’t beat the price!  Check out their website, http://midsommerflight.com/.  Maybe I’ll see you at their play this summer – just don’t get there before me and take my spot!

For my birthday in February, I received a DVD copy of London’s Globe Theatre’s “original practices” production of Twelfth Night.  What is “original practices”?  Essentially it means that the production is put on as close to the way it would have been done by Shakespeare’s group as possible.  The words are pronounced as they would have been then, the costumes are made of material that was around then, and of course, all the roles are played by men (or boys).  This production was originally mounted in London around 2005, and we saw it there--our first time seeing a play at London’s Globe Theatre.  The production was later brought to the US where it was performed at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater although we did not go to see it again.  The play was once again re-staged in London, and this DVD is a film of one of the recent performances.  Note, this is a film of the stage play.  It’s not a movie of Twelfth Night.  You see the stage from several views, but all the action takes place on the stage.  Viola is played by recent Academy Award winner Mark Rylance.  Malvolio is played by Stephen Fry.  The production was absolutely fabulous and the actors were great and there wasn’t anything not to like about the DVD-- except for the fact that it is a DVD.  It’s not the same.  When I watch a DVD of a play, it’s enjoyable and I love it; but given a choice between watching a DVD of a production and seeing a live presentation, I am going to go with the live presentation just about every time.

Which brings me to my latest encounter with Twelfth Night.  As part of the Shakespeare 400 celebration in Chicago, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater brought Filter Theater of London’s production of Twelfth Night.  Now if the Globe’s production was “original practices,” Filter’s production was simply original.  The play is done on what appears to be a crowded musical concert stage with the actors often taking up instruments throughout the performance.  Although somewhat abbreviated (90 minutes or so without an intermission) the production kept pretty much the entire story intact.  Although all of the actors were good, I especially enjoyed Fergus O’Donnell’s Malvolio and Sandy Foster’s Feste/Maria.  The play was fast paced and interactive to the point of throwing balls back and forth as well as a conga line from the crowd.  This play is going to be gone soon (March 13th), but perhaps the theater company will be back with this production, or even better, with a different play.

Titus Andronicus: The Right Brain Project

I don’t often come home from a play bloody.  Then again I don’t often come home from seeing Titus Andronicus. 

Many bardwatchers, myself included, would argue that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s best play.  If that’s true, it stands to reason Shakespeare must have a worst play.  My vote goes to Titus Andronicus.  Generally thought to be one of the Bard’s earlier works, Titus is an historical play only in that it is based in Rome. That is to say it’s not based on any pre-existing event (like Julius Caesar) or story (like Cymbeline).  The emperor of Rome has died and his sons are contesting who should be the successor.  The people however have elected Titus, who has just returned from the wars with prisoners in tow.  He refuses the honor and backs the claims of one Saturninus who becomes Emperor.  Saturninus returns the favor by deciding to marry Livonia, Titus’ daughter who is betrothed to Bassanius, the Emperor’s brother (and loser in the contest of who would be Emperor).  Titus approves the match between the new Emperor and his daughter, and kills one of his own sons who attempts to dissuade him.  Saturninus changes his mind and marries Tamara, Queen of the Goths, one of the prisoners brought home by Titus.  Tamara has vowed revenge on Titus for his sacrificing of her oldest son to the gods.  In short order Bassanius and two more of Titus’ sons are dead and Livonia is raped and mutilated.  There’s a break in the action and ultimately pretty much every one dies.

There are really no great speeches in Titus.  There are no real sympathetic characters.  Titus is the “hero” for lack of a better word, but he is also the guy who kills his own son over the question of who will marry his daughter (the son’s sister).  There are trace elements of what are better developed later in other plays.  Titus seems to go mad.  Is this a foreshadowing of Hamlet perhaps?  Aaron exists only to do evil.  Is this a foreshadowing of Iago?  Tamara visits Titus in the latter’s “delusion.”  Could this be a foreshadowing of Twelfth Night?  There’s a very brief encounter with someone who may have been comic relief similar to the doorkeeper in the Scottish play.  Unfortunately, the character in Titus gets hanged.  Speaking of the Scottish play, perhaps Tamara later comes back as Lady M.

For all those reasons, the play doesn’t get performed very often.  This was only our second time seeing it.  In fact, I think it’s only the second time I can remember knowing that it was being performed in our area.  So kudos to the Right Brain Project, a north side Chicago theater group, for deciding to stage this one.

Although the play itself has its problems, the theater experience was first rate.  The RBP is one of those small, relatively new theater companies (established 2005) that operates out of a small venue in Chicago.  Their performance area is roughly the size of a one car garage.  Audience members sit along the sides and the play happens largely in the middle.  There are stage areas at either end but most of the action occurs in between.  The result is the kind of theater experience that is immediate and often thrilling.

To illustrate the immediacy of this particular production, two bowls were hanging from the ceiling at either end of the performance area.  As characters die (which in this play is quite often) “blood” is poured into one of the bowls.  Ultimately the bowls themselves are upended, resulting in the “blood” splashing everywhere.  This comes as no surprise.  Each attendee is given a poncho to wear.  It was our good fortune to sit right in front of the area where the most blood is spilled.  Despite our ponchos, some of the “blood” found its way onto our clothes, thus the statement above about coming home bloody.  We were assured by the program that stage blood usually washes out of clothes.

 The play is violent and brutal and the RBP staging is somewhat violent and brutal as well.  The rape scene is fairly explicit.  This is definitely not a production for the young.

 The performers were all talented but in my opinion two particularly bear mentioning.  Simina Contras, a relative newcomer to Chicago, stood out as Tamara.  At first it seemed that the director had requested that she and the actors playing her two sons affect an Eastern European accent.   However in reading her bio I learned she is actually from Romania so the accent was probably not that difficult for her.  After seeing her as Tamara it would be interesting to see her as Lady M (with or without an accent).  Dominique Worsley, who plays Tamara’s lover and all around evil guy Aaron also stood out.  I would like to see him play Iago sometime.  Give him an evil character with a little class.

Based on this experience I would certainly recommend the RBP for future productions.  Their website, www.therbp.org has lots of information about some of the productions they have done in the past and ones they are planning on doing in the future.  Check them out (when there isn’t a Shakespeare production).  In the meantime, I have to go attend to my blood-stained pants.

Merchant of Venice - First Folio Theatre, Oak Brook, IL

In 1997 we stumbled upon a new theater company doing outdoor summer theater in Oakbrook, IL, a community not too far north of where we live.  Their inaugural play that year was “The Tempest” and since it was close, we had not seen it and of course because it was the Bard, we went.  As I recall David Darlow, a veteran Chicago stage actor played Prospero.  The theater area was located on the grounds of the Mayslake Peabody Estate which was owned by the Dupage Forest Preserve.  The Artistic Director of this new theater was Alison Vesely, an actor who we had seen before most notably with the Footsteps Theater, an all female theater group based in Chicago, known for performing all female productions of Shakespeare’s works.  (We saw their wonderful production of Richard III some time previously)

Needless to say we were excited to go.  We went and had a great time.  We enjoyed the show and have continued to go back since that time.  Although we haven’t made it every year, we have managed to see the Scottish play and several others.  We were able to arrange a Bard brigade group to see Hamlet (A Bard brigade is our name for corralling a group of friends together to go see a play).  The theater expanded its repertoire beyond outdoor summer theater a few years ago and we saw one of their Jeeves productions (quite a fun production I might say).  They now operate year round with not one but two performing spaces within the building on the grounds. 

But they have continued with the summer Shakespeare.  It’s still close, it’s still reasonably priced and it’s still the Bard, so off we went yet again.  This year it was to enjoy The Merchant of Venice, a rather problematic “comedy” in the canon.

Antonio is in love and needs money to win the hand of the girl he loves (Portia).  Antonio’s rich friend, Bassanio, agrees to loan him the money, but unfortunately he has a cash flow problem.  No problem, he will borrow the money temporarily from Shylock, a money lender in the town who happens to be Jewish.  Shylock and Bassanio are not exactly friends; in fact it seems Shylock has few if any friends, just a daughter.  Shylock however is a businessman so he agrees to loan the money to Bassanio with the collateral being a “pound of flesh” should Bassanio not be able to pay back.  As things happen, Bassanio’s ships don’t come in so he has no money to pay back Shylock.  Shylock’s daughter takes off with a Christian, leaving Shylock even more bitter at his treatment at the hands of the likes of Bassanio.  Shylock wants his pound of flesh from Bassanio and he is determined to get it.  Does he get it?  Well, just on the off hand chance that the reader has not seen the play I won’t give away the end.  See the play!

First Folio does a wonderful job with this production.  Kevin McKillip, who we have seen in several productions here, is tremendous as the first love-struck, then thunder-struck Bassanio.  No sooner does he win the girl of his dreams he learns his closest friend is in mortal danger!  Michael Goldberg brings a very physical presence (he’s much physically larger than most of the other actors) to his character Shylock. He does a great job bringing a sense of believability to his fury against Anthonio.  Melanie Kellar as Portia seemed to have fun in the role.  Overall the play was quite enjoyable, despite its arbitrary designation as a “comedy.”

 The First Folio theater experience is the classic picnic before the play setting.  The actual seating area can get a bit crowded when all the tables and wine and cheese are spread out however.  Seating is first come, first served.  If you go, plan to arrive at least an hour early.  It’s bring your own food (and bottle if you so choose).  Spread out, enjoy your meal, and then sit back and enjoy the play.  The seating area is level and the stage itself is elevated.  Occasionally a plane goes overhead, but it’s much rarer now than it was when the theater first started in the late 90s. 

 First Folio has a website (www.firstfolio.org) where information is available for upcoming plays for their season.  Next year they will be doing Cymbeline! A “Folk Tale with Music” they are calling it.  We’re planning on going.  I hope you do to.  Just don’t take our space.

My show of shows

A year ago my younger son told me that his 7^th grade class was studying Shakespeare.  I suggested that I should come in and show some of my collection of playbills, signatures, memorabilia and the like.  I don’t know if was because I was intrigued by the possibility, if it was because the boy didn’t think I’d do it, or perhaps it was because he thought I would, but I emailed his teacher and next thing I knew, there I was in front of a group of 7^th graders explaining what I liked about the Bard.  When I left I told her I would be glad to do it again.  Last week I was back, a return engagement if you will, regaling another class of 7^th graders with tales of theater, theaters and the Bard.

 I began my presentation telling the students that I was there to talk about riots, murders and explosions.  In other words, I wanted to talk about 19^th century American theater.  I started with the first real American Star, Edwin Forrest.  As talented and as ground breaking as he was, today he’s most often remembered for the Astor Place riots.  To quickly summarize, in 1849, his fans surrounded a theater where his theatrical rival, Charles Macready, was performing MacBeth.  Within the theater Forrest’s fans disrupted the play forcing Macready to mime the play because he couldn’t be heard.  In fairness, Forrest’s fans were only doing to Macready what they believed Macready’s fans had done to Forrest on a recent European tour.  Outside the theater, armed guards hired by the theater later fired into the crowd, killing 25 and injuring about 80. 

Edwin Forrest had a friend, or at least an admirer, in Junius Brutus Booth, an English actor who had moved to Baltimore.  Booth named his elder son after Forrest.  Edwin Booth grew to become one of, if not the greatest American stage actor of the 19^th century.  My discussion of Edwin Booth included my trip in 2000 to The Players, the club Booth started for actors still located in Gramercy Park in New York.  My historical memorabilia collection centers mostly on Edwin Booth. I showed multiple pictures, playbills, cigarette cards, magazine articles, biographies and his signature.  .  I ended my discussion of the life of Edwin Booth with the fact that although he was his father’s more talented son, he was not the more famous son.  That honor goes to his younger brother, John Wilkes.

I then talked about Joseph Jefferson.  Although Jefferson was more known for comic acting (“Rip Van Winkle” especially) rather than the Bard, he is important for those of us in the Chicago area in that he is the namesake of the local theater awards (the Joseph Jefferson award).  I have several examples of Jefferson’s autographs, along with a letter, some pictures and his autobiography.  While I was dwelling on the Chicago angle, I talked about the Iroquois Theater fire and pointed out to the students where they could find the most haunted alley in Chicago.

After talking about Jefferson I jumped to the modern day with examples of playbills and autographs and links to the actors involved that a seventh grader would recognize.  I showed my autographed picture of Kenneth Branagh from Hamlet (recognizable to a seventh grader perhaps as Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter).  A quick discussion followed of the time I saw Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson do King Lear.  (Emma Thompson would be known as Sybil Trelawny, also from Harry Potter).  I then showed the playbill from a 2000 production of Coriolanus starring Ralph Fiennes (known to the class as Lord Voldemort).  I showed them my signed Timon of Athens playbill from Ian McDiarmid (better known to the class as the Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars movies).

I felt I was running out of time so I quickly moved into ways the students could watch modern versions of Shakespeare stories, often without knowing it.  I pointed out that Disney’s “The Lion King” had many of the Hamlet story points in it.  More specifically I suggested “West Side Story” (R & J), “She’s the Man” (Twelfth Night) and “O” (Othello).  The class was getting ready to read “Taming of the Shrew” so I highly recommended “10 Things I Hate About You.”  Of course I pointed out that the last suggestion starred the late Heath Ledger, he of the Joker fame.

Feeling that I used up my time (I had gone on almost an hour) the teacher asked for questions.  And then the questions came.  (For some it was a choice between questioning me or school work so those students were motivated).  What was my favorite play? (Hamlet).  How much does a theater ticket cost?  (long answer) What was the most popular Shakespeare play?  (Most produced: Midsummer) How many copies of Shakespeare’s plays do I own? (2).  If I went back in time and could ask Shakespeare one question, what would it be? (Did you write these plays?).  Were you ever in a play?  (Not really.  I had a walk on part in a college production of King Lear).

The next day I received a pile of thank you notes from the class which were quite enjoyable to read.  They will in fact become part of my collection as well.  But the next day I received an invitation for a repeat performance.  Apparently the students in this class were talking to the students in another, similar class and that teacher talked to my son’s teacher and voila, I’m set up to do it all again this next week.  This time I want to bring in John Barrymore to the discussion and perhaps a few more pictures.  All I need to remember is to “suit the action to the word, the word to action.”

Who Writes this Stuff?

http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/anonymous/According to the records, Shakespeare died in 1616.  Seven years later (1623) two of his colleagues collected his plays and published them in the famous “First Folio.”  Ben Jonson famously wrote the forward.  The Bard and family were safely interred in his home town of Stratford Upon Avon in England and his reputation seemed safe as England’s greatest writer.  That is until about two hundred years later when the idea was first popularized that perhaps Shakespeare wasn’t that great, perhaps he wasn’t even good, perhaps he was a fraud.  Someone else wrote the plays and poems and sonnets and they were only credited to Shakespeare for any number of reasons.

 And so the authorship controversy was born.  To briefly sum up the issue, those who question the Shakespearian authorship (the “anti-Stratfordians”) believe the person who wrote those plays had to be very well educated, very well traveled, and very well connected.  The man we know as William Shakespeare was none of those.  A man of limited education, little travel and little actual court experience, he could never have written the plays.  Those who reject this idea, that is, the traditionalists reject the “anti-Stratfordian line as being elitist and point to the fact that apparently no one questioned the authorship at the time and even so great a writer as Ben Jonson was a fan.

Our exhaustive research here at Bardwatching consists of reading one book, Who Wrote Shakespeare by John Michell.  I did not purchase this book because I knew it was the definitive work on the subject.  I got it because I saw it at a used book store and thought, why not?  (According to the Amazon web site, Publisher’s Weekly called this book an “unconvincing piece of shaky scholarship.”) Regardless, I came away with the belief that the case against Shakespearian authorship is far stronger than the case for any of the other candidates (which include such luminaries of the time as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and even Queen Elizabeth herself).   Even after reading Michell’s work I was comfortable giving credit to the Bard (and by the Bard I mean the man William Shakespeare) and continuing to enjoy the plays as I had opportunity to see them.

Others would not go so gently.  One candidate for the authorship prize is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.  Those who support  (the “Oxfordians”) are a particularly vocal lot.   Coincidentally,  was Michell’s favorite choice for authorship.  Currently there is a fairly active Facebook page dedicated to proving Edward de Vere  did in fact write the plays commonly ascribed to Shakespeare.   The Oxfordian case hit the big time with the recent production of the film “Anonymous” starring Rhys Ifans as the Earl of Oxford.

 “Anonymous” is not a documentary.  I am sure that the Oxfordians would consider it fiction based on fact.  Those on the other side would probably consider it revisionist history.  We here at Bardwatching thought it was a pretty good movie. 

The Earl of Oxford, according to the film, early on showed a liking to poetry and writing.  It was a poorly kept secret among his friends and family that he had this literary side.  However it was made clear to him that writing was no way for a gentleman, especially a nobleman, to make a living.  Oxford however was determined that his words could sway the nation far more than position and/or power so he devises a way to get his “words” out.  He approaches Ben Jonson to be his living pen name.  Oxford gives the plays to Jonson, Jonson takes credit and everyone is happy.  Jonson hesitatingly agrees to present one of the plays but before he can take credit, William Shakespeare, a barely literate, and not very talented, member of the company takes credit for the play and a literary star is “born.”

The movie follows the life of de Vere through its various ups and downs.  Although it is a historical fact that de Vere was well connected, it is not necessarily proven that he was quite as connected with Queen Elizabeth as the movie suggests.  By the end of the film, de Vere passes from the scene, soon to be forgotten, while Shakespeare’s fame and reputation only grows.

 I enjoyed the film.  It’s a period piece, not unlike “Shakespeare in Love.”  (That movie, as some might recall, posits that Christopher Marlowe had a large role in the writing of the plays. Who can forget “Romeo and Ethel?”)  Will the movie convince you that de Vere actually wrote the plays?  I do not think it will.  Does it really matter?  Not to me.  To paraphrase an author who for the purposes of this paragraph shall remain anonymous, what’s in an author’s name?  A play written under any other name would sound just as sweet.

Coriolanus: Ralph Fiennes on Stage and on Film

In 2000 we were approaching the end of our quest, that is, our goal to see all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays performed live.  We had just returned from the Stratford Festival in Ontario where we had seen Titus Andronicus (#36), and all that stood between us and completing our task now was to see Coriolanus.  Upon our return it occurred to me that I could “surf the net” and perhaps someone, somewhere, would be performing the play. (Surfing the net was still a relatively new phenomenon.)  To our great delight, we discovered that a theater company from England, the Almeida Theatre Company, had performed the play there and was bringing their production to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York.  The star of the show was Ralph Fiennes, who was known to us only as one of the characters in the film Schindler’s List and as the star of The English Patient.

Getting to New York from our home in the Chicago area was not the most difficult obstacle.  First, our two young children (4 and 1 at the time) had to be placed somewhere.  Accomplishing that (thanks, Grandma), I then had to convince the BAM to sell me tickets to the show (and to Richard II, the other play that the Almeida Theatre Company was doing there in repertory).  The person in the box office was not too interested in selling me tickets to the two shows, let alone helping us finish our quest.  She was quite willing to sell me only the whole season series, which would have included the two shows and several others that I could not see traveling to New York for.  I begged, pleaded and cajoled for quite some time, but the only progress I made was obtaining the contact information for the Artistic Director.  I appealed by email to him and he, recognizing the uniqueness of our plight, relented, and we were able to secure two tickets for each show.

Our trip to New York was an adventure in and of itself.  As a native of the Chicago area, I didn’t think traveling to, through and in New York City would be all that different.  I was wrong.  Shortly after arriving at our hotel in mid-town Manhattan, we discovered that our vehicle had been towed.  We barely made it to the first show, Richard II, after rescuing the vehicle from the clutches of the New York police.  We were pleasantly surprised to see that David Burke, known to us as Dr Watson from the BBC Sherlock Holmes series, was also in the theater company.  The day between the two shows was taken up with getting to the club known as The Players, which is worthy of a blog post of its own.  But we kept an eye on the car, enjoyed our day, and made it back to the BAM in plenty of time to finish our quest.

Much has happened in the dozen years since we saw our first Coriolanus.  The landscape of New York City looks much different.  Heroes and villains have come and gone, and Ralph Fiennes has become an international star.  But apparently his mind never got very far away from Coriolanus, as he is back with a film version of the play, his directorial debut.

The film is a modern take on the play.  Although the play is set in Rome, the film was shot mostly in Belgrade which provides a lot of the bombed out urban look of the set.  To summarize the story, Rome has two problems.  On the one hand the common people are revolting.  On the other hand the city is at war with the Volskis, led by Eurifedes, played in the movie by Gerard Butler.  Caius Martius is a general who almost single-handedly defeats the Volski army at the city of Coriolus, for which act he is given great honors, including the new name of Coriolanus.  This pleases his mother, played in the movie by Vanessa Redgrave, to no end as she has raised her son with great intention that he should be successful.  Newly named Coriolanus is urged to run for Counsel, a political position of some import in Rome.  However, to do so he must appeal to the common people and gain their approval.  This is quite a problem as Coriolanus despises the common people.  He almost accomplishes the task, but through political manipulations the recent hero is ultimately banished.  In retaliation he joins the Volskis and is on the verge of defeating Rome when his mother appeals to him and he relents. 

This is a great film of a pretty good play.   I don’t think anyone sneers quite as well as Ralph Fiennes or shows such complete disdain.  For the character of Corialanus he is wonderful.  There are times when you see the leopard trying to change his spots, but he just can’t do it.  The film environment allows a much closer view of the inner torment that can be seen on his face.  Many of the side conversations that you would see between actors on the stage are set as newscasts on TV screens, a very clever way of moving the story along.  The movie has a quasi-documentary feel to it, especially with some of the battle sequences, which are rather graphic.  Gerard Butler does a good job as the enemy turned friend turned back to enemy, Eufidides.

Volumina is an interesting character, one of the more interesting of Shakespeare’s female roles.  She has some odd beliefs about what glory and honor and children are for.  At one point she says something to the effect that she would rather have 11 children die in battle than to have one live in comfort, not having served his country.  I suppose all countries have women who are that patriotic, but in this day and age it seems rather extreme.  Regardless, she, and only she, is able to make Coriolanus back down from what appears to be a certain victory over his former comrades, a decision which has tragic consequences for him and for her as well.

This is one of those plays that if anyone else’s name but Shakespeare’s were on it, it would be unlikely that it would ever be performed.  I am sure there are some that feel it is a great work of art, but I don’t.  It’s a good play, a great film, but it’s not Hamlet, or Henry V or even Julius Caesar.  I wonder what Ralph Fiennes could do with Hamlet . . .

Timon of Athens

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!