Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens (41 page)

10.
RSC 1965, directed by John Schlesinger. The feast scene showing Timon (Paul Scofield) serving his friends warm stones, Act 3 Scene 6: the set was initially “gorgeously Oriental, evoking Babylon rather than Athens.”

Perhaps the most interesting response came from Mervyn Jones, critic for the left-wing publication
Tribune
. To an England that had just discovered Beckett and where staging Brecht was still controversial,
Timon
expressed a very similar worldview, and many reviewers highlighted the parallels. Jones suggested, ironically, “that
Timon of Athens
was written by Bertolt Brecht,” continuing, “if so, John Schlesinger’s production is certainly on the right lines” (appreciative comments by several reviewers on the actors’ successful use of direct address to the audience support this stylistic evaluation). Jones then proceeded to critique the production in accordance with his theory, quoting Marx and Freud to support his points:

He concluded, “[Scofield] is the definitive Timon of our age … It is a performance of great discipline and intelligence.”
¹³²

This response to Scofield himself was echoed by less radical reviewers; comments such as “towering” and “magnificent” were constantly repeated, with particular emphasis on Scofield’s vocal ability, the “discordant sweetness”
¹³³
of his voice, “now darkly bronze, now glinting in silver.”
¹³⁴
Charles Graves, in a perceptive essay in the
Scotsman
, commented on his characterization:

The
Leamington Spa Courier’s
critic also contrasted the two:

There was also praise for the other minor characters: Young found the grizzled Brewster Mason “dignified and heroic as Alcibiades,” though older than expected. The
Times’
reviewer felt that “the false friends [were] neatly distinguished,” singling out “Timothy West as Lucius, trapped at the barber’s and writhing in his chair in mixed agonies of physical and moral discomfort,”
¹³⁷
while Evans particularly admired “David Waller’s Lucullus, a vicious, tittering spiritual and physical libertine, looking like the dark side … of Frankie Howard’s comic unctuousness.”
¹³⁸
He also commented ironically that “for those who hourly expect orgies from Mr Hall’s organization, Janet Suzman and Elizabeth Spriggs provide the data without overstepping the mark.”
¹³⁹

Only six years later, another mainstage production was scheduled and rehearsed, with Derek Godfrey as Timon, Gordon Gostelow as Apemantus, and Bernard Lloyd as Alcibiades. Unfortunately, this was canceled at the last minute due to the illness of the director, Clifford Williams. However, rehearsal photographs, program and other archive material give a very clear indication of the production’s intentions. Williams had directed an immensely successful and much
revived
Comedy of Errors
in 1962. This had a strong commedia influence, and Williams had a background in physical theater and mime; he was drawing on all this for his production of
Timon
. The production records show a strongly stylized and physical production, with a set consisting of numerous glass cubes and a dead tree, and actors wearing individualized dark and white commedia-style masks throughout.

The program is dominated by full-page illustrations, offering the audience a range of visual references through which to interpret the play: on the cover the lines “Timon is dead, entombed upon the very hem of the sea” are superimposed on a stylized line-drawing of sun and waves. The images inside include, in order, de Chirico’s metaphysical
Masks
(1917), Oppenheim’s
Cannibal Art
(1959), Dali’s surreal
Premonition of Civil War
(1936), an AD 331 Roman wall painting of a tiger pouncing on a sheep, and Dürer’s 1520 woodcut,
The Triumphal Car of Emperor Maximilian
, showing the emperor driven by Reason and accompanied by embodiments of the human virtues.

Of the verbal quotations featured, Muriel Bradbrook’s 1968 comments perhaps give the clearest indication of Williams’s intentions:

Although it seems that the cast at the time had reservations about both play and interpretation, this production showed all the signs of a highly exciting and innovative look at
Timon
, and it is a great loss that it did not go forward. It would be another nine years before another production would be staged, and this time not on the main stage but in the studio theater.

When challenged by the press in 1980 about why it had taken so long for the RSC to produce another
Timon
, artistic director Trevor Nunn replied that far from the company “overlook[ing the play,] … they had so many directors yearning to produce it, they could not decide whom to choose.”
¹⁴¹
The prize went to Ron Daniels, who had been the director responsible for The Other Place for the past three years. The “rough theater” approach and the intimacy of the studio setting had gained The Other Place an enthusiastic following since it opened in 1973. However, this was clearly also a low-risk strategy for a difficult play.

In any event, the production proved a resounding success. In 1965 criticism of the play itself had been mixed, though production and performers had won plaudits, but here the overwhelming response of the press was that the play itself deserved airing. It clearly spoke to the times: even in 1980 the play’s themes resonated with the growing atmosphere of individualism and financial greed that would characterize the coming decade. Michael Billington commented: “[
Timon
’s] neglect seems odd since [it] boasts a bravura leading role and chimes with the modern appetite for emotional extremes … the play has a powerful and bilious morality … it is implacably bitter but also … totally stageable”;
¹⁴²
B. A. Young added, “the present time in our national history is particularly appropriate to hear the play, for there is much in our recent affairs reflected in it.”
¹⁴³
There was further praise when the production transferred to London: Michael Coveney called it “this engrossing play,” adding “you hear a comparatively rare play as if it had been fresh-minted”;
¹⁴⁴
Geoffrey Wheatcroft argued that “the neglect seems puzzling, for it is a beautiful and curious work … a very funny play,”
¹⁴⁵
while Irving Wardle wrote of Timon’s exile, “These scenes are the greatest test of verse-speaking in the English repertory and anyone who has found them obscure or batteringly obsessive will discover new areas of gentleness, Swiftian wit and exultant music in this thrilling performance.”
¹⁴⁶

How far these comments reflected the prevailing mood of the times, how far the effect of the intimate playing space, and how far
the success of the actual production, is unclear. It is worth noting, however, that Desmond Pratt, who loved both play and production (“a very fine performance of a great classic tragic role”), nevertheless thought that “the last two acts, with their famous invective, [were] too ferocious verbally for such a small place,”
¹⁴⁷
and the next RSC production reverted to the main house.

Daniels and his designer, Chris Dyer, chose to give the play a Japanese setting. The first half was bright and light, with square wooden pillars rising from a floor of wide scrubbed boards, while the guests sat on the floor at long low tables, “appropriate furniture of simple but beautiful design that seems rich even in isolation,”
¹⁴⁸
to eat sushi “with much fluttering of napkins and chopsticks.”
¹⁴⁹
Headbands and short haircuts prevailed throughout, and the “voluminous costumes [were] bright and attractive,”
¹⁵⁰
wide-sleeved linen kimonos with colorful trims, and red samurai-style armor for the soldiers. They were very striking against the bare set. The masque, limited by size of both cast and playing space, featured two geisha girls and a presumably Japanese “Cupid” whose headdress, neck decorations, body paint, and ankle bells seemed rather to indicate an Aztec Indian.

This traditional Japanese setting, arbitrary though the choice might seem at first, was not merely visually appealing; it provided the play with the strong underpinning of a society distant from us in time and space but yet with recognizable values and clear rituals, “a society that expresses itself by its customs … [Timon’s] mistake, perhaps, is to place too great a store by the rituals of greeting and communal feasting.”
¹⁵¹

The second half was set in “a nautical wilderness,”
¹⁵²
“upon the very hem o’th’sea” (5.4.76): the stage was hung with ragged fishing nets, “a tangle of rigging and tattered cloth,”
¹⁵³
with a soundtrack of screeching seagulls, waves, and distantly howling animals. Roger Warren complained that here the “production seemed to lose its line: stylisation gave way to a kind of realism,”
¹⁵⁴
yet this contrast between the highly formal and ritualized human world of the city and the natural world of beasts outside was surely deliberate. This setting was imaginatively utilized in Act 5, enabling Timon to die onstage
but also remain unseen during the final sequence. Robert Cushman, in the
Observer
, found this conclusion very effective:

In contrast to Schlesinger’s reading in 1965, Richard Pasco and director Ron Daniels had chosen to slant the play more toward personal tragedy than social satire. Both feasting and masque were dignified: