Timon of Athens

Play by William Shakespeare

Directed by Bill Barclay
With Allyn Burrows (Timon of Athens), Bobbie Steinbach (Flavius), Will Lyman (Apemantus), Daniel Berger-Jones (Alcibiades), and Steven Barkhimer, John Kuntz, Joel Kolodner and Michelle Dowd in multiple supporting roles

Actors’ Shakespeare Project
Midway Studios
Boston, MA

Since its inception six years ago, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project – founded by Benjamin Evett, long-time former member of the company at the American Repertory Theatre – has produced three or four works by Shakespeare – with the very occasional departure to works of others – annually. The productions are given in multiple venues around Boston, Cambridge and Somerville, and are, on the average, of extremely high quality. Typically, these productions emphasize acting and direction and keep fancy sets and highly technical stagecraft to a minimum. The results are most rewarding.

I happened upon the ASP at the YMCA in Central Square in Cambridge at the end of their first season. They were doing Julius Caesar, and I was so impressed by the high quality of the acting and direction, and the inventiveness – at low cost but high return – of the staging – that I have seen every production since.

Timon of Athens is a weird play. It has virtually none of the subtlety that most of Shakespeare’s works exhibit, and comes off as much more uni-dimensional.

Its plot is relatively straightforward. Timon is a generous member of the Athens gentry who loves to spend money wining and dining his friends. When the bill collector comes knocking, Timon tries to get some of those erstwhile friends to help him out, to no avail. He quickly becomes disillusioned and retreats to a cave in the countryside, after which the fate of Athens and the fate of Timon become equally dismal.

At least in this production, the character of Timon appears to shift overnight from a suave and debonair man about town to a Calibanesque man-beast who retains few marks of his formerly civilized self. How much of this dualistic treatment comes from Shakespeare, and how much from accentuation by Barclay’s direction and Burrows’ acting, is hard to tell. They do not appear to make an effort to play it down. Burrows is indeed competent in the role, but to me, the production would have been stronger with a more subtle approach to Timon’s transformation, and might have assisted what seems to be an uncharacteristic bluntness in the script itself.

Bobbie Steinbach, who has been in multiple ASP productions, is always a delight. Whatever her magic is, she makes it easy to listen to Shakespeare and appears to do it with grace, without effort, but with a good dose of wry and whimsical irony.

The four members of the supporting cast play seventeen roles between them, which is sometimes confusing, even though the overall result is entertaining. One othem, John Kuntz, another long-time ASP actor, is always demonstrative and funny in his roles, and whichever ones he was playing here – even if I wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be – came off.

The ASP has done a lot of this multiple role stuff with other plays and it has seemed to be more successful in some cases than others. A few years ago, they did Henry V in the basement of The Garage in Harvard Square and just four or five actors played all the roles. In that case it was a marvel, not confusing, and really quite a trip to see the small cast take their bows at the end after having given the illusion of a much larger cast of characters onstage.

At the end of the first half of Timon, there is a really dramatic and striking scene change: the facade set which had been standing as the background of Athens drops forward towards the audience with a crash. Burrows, as Timon, stands in a carefully designated spot where there is a rectangle carved in the set – it is the spot which will come to signify the cave of the second half. Courageously and adeptly, Burrows remains there, not quivering, as the set falls around him. It’s a fabulous moment, and a great set-up for what is to come.

– BADMan