Word: timoner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...former associates visit him, some to deplore his condition, others to exploit him for gold or to ask for his help. Timon sends them all away and refuses to defend Athens against invasion. Alcibiades is Timon's only faithful friend, and in return Timon gives him gold. As the city falls, Timon dies in the woods, but the memory of his former self prompts the conqueror to spare Athens and reestablish peace...
...more so than either Lear or Macbeth, and it presents several complications. The immediate problem is the absence of a working text. The Shakesperean original, involving an anti-climactic number of secondary characters wondering in and out of the stage and one too many perorations from the newly misanthropic Timon, is clearly unsuitable for a student production. To this problem, director Matt Hudson found the simplest solution: he cut. The cast was reduced to about half its prescribed size, Timon's speeches were shortened or eliminated and the verbal exchanges between characters were reduced to the bare minimum. This aides...
...second complication involves the cast. As written by Shakespeare, there are almost no female characters in Timon of Athens. Yet the Agassiz production gave the play a different twist by featuring Julie Rattey '02 in the title role, together with four other actresses in a cast of ten. It remains unclear, however, whether the production was meant to be gender neutral or to capitalize on this change to the original cast...
...While the minimal use of costumes and lines seems to indicate the former, the final scene between Timon and the steward Flavius draws heavily on the gender difference between the two actors. The Athenian context makes this scene stand out for its sexual overtones, and had the director's intent been more explicit, it would have provided for a very original interpretation of the Shakespearean drama...
...While the interactions between actors remains somewhat ill-defined, the actors speak their lines beautifully. Julie Rattey in particular makes for a very credible Timon. However, the other characters are often awkward in their interactions with each other. And in the case of Timon, sometimes the interaction between characters ceases entirely, as some of his dialogues occasionally border on monologues. This, however, is a general pitfall of Shakesperean productions and, by comparison, the cast of Timon manages their lines remarkably well...