British Council and CoolConnections art association present Timon of Athens by W. Shakespeare which is the third performance in the framework of NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE project 2012-13. The screenings will take place on 31st January, 7 and 21 February in Formula Kino Gorizont cinema hall (Moscow), Gallery cinema hall and "Avrora" ( Saint-Petersburg)
Timon of Athens has always been perceived as one of the most complicated and experimental theatre plays of Shakespeare with deep problematic and outstanding genre peculiarities. Though it did not have wide cultural influence, it caught attention of the brightest minds of the époque. Karl Marx referred to Timon while defining the nature of the capital. Vladimir Nabokov took the name for his White flame and Peter Brooke created a provocative performance where Timon was presented as a young idealist and his antagonist Apemantus – as a blusterous Algerian.
Nowadays the main conflict of the play – life on credit, indiscrete expenditure, “promises beyond means” as Shakespeare says – is a burning issue. It is so close and coherent to contemporary audience that the action of the play can be easily moved from the conditional ancient Athens to Wall-street, Madrid in an uproar, Dublin countryside or at least modern Athens. Even to London City where windows of Timon’s office look to.
In Nicholas Hytner’s performance Timon turns into the philanthropist without money and direction, into the imposter called Saachi – the demi-monde leader, organiser of parties and receptions, who always has a penny for every London cadger. The first episode of the play takes place on one of such receptions organised in the picture gallery under the large painting of El Greco (the brilliant humorous detail from Hytner). Following the substandard logic of the “strange” Shakespeare, we fall into the gap of bankrupt and betrayal together with the main character. We enter the crowded streets full of occupy-protestants, go to the abandoned wastelands of solitude and despair and finally come to the tragic and, again, up-to-the-minute final.
Hytner used the miraculous openness of Shakespeare’s text to interpretations to transform the characters of the play into the heroes of Oscar Wild style satire. At the stages we can see a tragic millionaire, his faithful secretary, grotesque codger aristocrat, cockney sniffer always twitching his nose and vile Bohemia.
The main character is performed by the great Symon Russel Beale who is the favourite Hytner’s actor and who was nominated the greatest stage actor of his generation by the critics. His work in Timon of Athers is a true workshop on how to make Shakespeare the play-write of XXI century.
(Text by Leonid Alexandrovski)
The performances which have been already shown in the framework of the National Theatre Live project:
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