Timon of Athens (review)

Graffiti in a working class Roman neighborhood reads: “For Berlusconi, you are neither man nor woman but consumer.” For four decades Italy had the largest and, with its Gramscian roots, most independent-minded Communist party in Western Europe. The collapse of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe signaled a crisis in the Italian left, now inaccurately associated with the economic woes of the welfare state. Silvio Berlusconi filled this perceived power vacuum by forging alliances with the radical right and running on a platform of consumerism, capitalism, affluence, and greed. Whereas Reagan used the media, Berlusconi actually owns it, lurching toward telefascism with attempted takeovers of competing channels, networks which had historically been affiliated with oppositional political parties.

Given such a sociopolitical context, simply selecting Shakespeare’s Timon of Athensfor theatrical production constitutes a polemical act. Reaching beyond Brecht to this proto-Marxist Shakespearean text suggests a desire to re-suture Italian cultural consciousness to its left wing humanist past. Walter Pagliaro, director of the production, explains the choice: “What does this tragedy actually talk about? Mostly about the bewilderment of a society devastated by money.” With double digit unemployment on one hand, and almost half the population owning second homes on the other, economic inconsistencies precisely characterize contemporary Italy as just such a “bewildered” and “devastated” society.

Pagliaro takes Timon’s propensity for throwing parties in the face of his unacknowledged encroaching bankruptcy, his general addiction to immediate gratification, as a reflection upon the chronic indebtedness of Italian capitalism in the credit card age. The audience seemed to recognize the contemporary relevance of Timon’s claim that “were the godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods” (act 3; scene 6). Alcibiades’ attack on the complicity of the Athenian senate with the practice of usury played as an even more specific indictment of the fiscal policies of the Berlusconi regime (act 3; scene 5). Doubling the actors used as Timon’s guests in the roles of the Athenian senators further critiqued the connection between government and capital in Italy’s post-Armani age. Timon’s invective against Athenian greed (act 4; scene 1) and Flavius’ “For bounty, that make gods, does still mar men” (act 4; scene 2) virtually stopped the show.

Since Timon vacillates from humanist largesse to embittered misanthropy, the role would have profited from the sort of bravura performance style which often characterizes Italian productions of Shakespeare. Instead Massimo Venturiello provided a respectful interpretation too diligently aware of the polemical content of his role. His Timon remained too decorous for the excesses of behavior attributed to him by Apemantus: “The middle of humanity thou never knowest but the extremity of both ends” (act 4; scene 3). As Flavius, Antonio Fattorini gave a sympathetic performance in a sympathetic role, while Paolo Graziosi as Apemantus was more at home with the character’s urban cynicism than his rural earnestness.

The most prominent element of the set was a recreation of a portion of an ancient Greek theatre, so that the Italian audience faced an onstage seating space, forming a circle around the downstage action. This onstage seating space was employed by characters themselves, by Apemantus as spectator at Timon’s first banquet, and by Timon as spectator at his own second anti-banquet. Pagliaro staged the first banquet as a recreation of pre-Leonardo versions of the Last Supper, with the reddish-haired and bearded Timon in flowing robes, centered and surrounded by his followers in more pedestrian trousers, and Apemantus sitting Judas-like on the opposite side of the table. The moment foreshadows Timon’s martyrdom to his friends, made explicit in Apemantus’ observation that Timon’s friends “eat him” rather than “eat with him” (act 1; scene 2). At one point Apemantus so removes himself from the action that he speaks from an actual theatre box, equating his physical and ideological positioning vis-à-vis Timon with that of the audience.

The recreated Greek theatre space also functions as the Athenian senate during the first half of...