Timon of Athens
Paris Autumn Festival
The Observer

For some years now Peter Brook’s theatrical headquarters has been Paris, whence he has emerged to stage gibberish spectaculars in Persepolis, or to tour African Villages, before returning to base for another bout of secluded experiment with the actors of his International Centre for Theatrical Research. However, at this year’s Paris Autumn Festival, he and his troupe have emerged to present their first classic: Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens.

As a Shakespearean director Mr. Brook has retained a scrupulous regard for the text. His celebrated version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was indeed exceptional in its refusal to cut a single line, even the most obscure. For this production of Timon some of the most oceanic of Elizabethan verse has been transmuted into crisp French prose, but I detected no actual excisions.

The production has been staged in a house—the Théâtre des Bouffe-du-Nord—unused for 20 years and now virtually derelict. Both the stage and the original seating have been torn out; entering the auditorium we confront a gaping proscenium arch, which gives on to a bare peeling wall adorned by a perilous-looking catwalk. Between the arch and the wall, where the stage used to be, is now an abyss, out of which climb two or three stairways and, at various times, several presumably intrepid performers. Most of the actions, however, takes place on the floor of what were once the stalls. Here the audience sit in a semicircle, awaiting the telling of a tale. The actors, sitting and strolling among them, detach themselves to do the telling.

Sometimes they form their own circles. This is the shape in which Mr. Brook has staged the two banquets; the first at which the prodigal Timon showers his friends with gifts, and the second at which, bankrupt and appalled by their ingratitude, he showers them with dirty water. The production is not, from moment to moment, amazingly inventive, but every so often it comes up with an image that transfixes. 

Two flattering lords, during Timon’s prosperity, lie with their heads in his lap and he fondles them. These same lords, believing their benefactor ruined, arrive at his last surprise banquet bemused, frightened and huddling together for reassurance. And in the play’s last movement, when Timon in a frenzy of disgust has retreated to the wilderness and, digging for roots to eat, finds gold, his discovery takes the form not of gold coin but of gold dust, which Francois Marthouret’s Timon blows out of his hand at all who come to visit him.

M. Marthouret constitutes no mean image himself. He may well be the handsomest young actor in Europe. His Timon, if you forgive the dated reference, is one of the Beautiful People, innocently living up to a code of unreal generosity. To go back further, and more appropriately still, he is a Golden Boy. Gold is the chain around his neck, and golden too the sweater beneath his casual, dazzling white suit. Golden above all is his smile; he is, up until that moment at which he realises his betrayal, superlatively sunny. That moment, too, is well taken, the smile giving way to a snark, and against all augury he succeeds at least part-way with the extended unforgiving rage of the last acts.

Apart from M. Marthauret there are 11 French actors in Mr. Brook’s troupe of 19; and the cosmopolitan remainder (including one Englishman, Bruce Myers, an RSC dropout) do not seriously interfere with the rewardingly native flavour of the whole. For, whatever rigorous and innovative motions they may have been through in the interests of Theàtrical Research, this company preserve the strength of the French classic tradition. Even when acting in prose they know how to handle tirades; M. Marthouret’s flights—particularly his first farewell to Athens—are an instance; the banished Alcibiades, defying the senate, is equally adept in the rhetoric.

What the production cannot do is to establish the play as a unity; the second half is sustained purely by magnificent invective, but it can pall in the original and does sooner here. The notorious split in the play is not in its structure so much as in the balance of its characterisation. Timon is seen tragically, while his contemporaries are satirised; they, more than any other in the canon, belonging to the world of Ben Johnson. Mr. Brook treats them accordingly and amusingly: the Athenian Senate convene in academic gowns; Timon’s creditors arrive to hammer on his door like so many brokers’ men—to each his own briefcase.