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Can’t buy me love, but flattery is cheap
TIMON OF ATHENS
Camden's People's Theatre
DOES money buy friendship? Not for Timon (Jonathan Gibson), apparently.
Timon of Athens is one of Shakespeare’s least polished works and thus one of his least staged plays. Here, director David Cottis transforms the action to the location of a British colony in 1940s Hollywood, where friendship and allegiances are bought and sold.
Timon, wealthy but gullible, doesn’t sit on his pile of gold but gives it out freely to his ‘friends’. He likes the way they flatter – heck, who wouldn’t – so he carries on until all his riches are gone. But Timon does not despair. “I am wealthy in my friends”, he says when times get tough. Little does he know that his friends are false, so he curses human kind and retreats to the life of a hermit, where he eventually perishes, blaming man and nature for his unhappiness, but never himself.
Timon is not redeemed in this play: he does not learn and become a better man, he just dwindles and dies.
This play is less a study of the human condition, as Timon seems one dimensional, but more a warning about bad money management.
The staging works especially well here. A bare black and white floor proves a simple canvas on which the cast paint scenes as bright as any colourful stage design, proving that even when stripped down to the bare essentials, Shakespeare’s words captivate us from beginning to end.
Until August 24
020 7419 4841 |
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