Timon of Athens, Stratford upon Avon

Cardboard Citizens love to add extra bits to Shakespeare. If this production works, its not because of that, but because of the Shakespeare.

If this play has a general social conclusion, I find it difficult to say. If Director Adrian Jackson thinks it does, it's that it's a metaphor about a culture that sanctifies "personal growth". But if audiences and actors don't like this play, perhaps it's because one of the characters says "The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends" which is not audiences and actors like if it isn't.

If Jackson interlards the text with things to do with homelessness, it's to give me an opportunity to interlard my text with verbiositanisms. If he follows William Empson in highlighting the text's obsessive dog-imagery, he does.

The acting is good.

If the production may be intended as a moral warning, it might not be, becuase if I'm going to commit to anything, it might be that it's about what Shakespeare understood, which is Timon's tragic bipolarity. If I haven't really talked about this at any point in the review so far, it's not because I don't consider it to be the whole point but nevermind it's too late becuase this is the end. Probably.