Michael Pennington on Timon of Athens (Shakespeare On Stage)

By Michael Pennington and Julian Curry

Michael Pennington discusses playing Timon of Athens, in this ebook taken from Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2 - Twelve Leading Actors on Twelve Key Roles.
In each volume of the Shakespeare On Stage series, a leading actor takes us behind the scenes of a landmark Shakespearean production, recreating in detail their memorable performance in a major role. They leads us through the choices they made in rehearsal, and how the character works in performance, shedding new light on some of the most challenging roles in the canon. The result is a series of individual masterclasses that will be invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare – and fascinating for audiences of the plays.
In this volume, Michael Pennington discusses stepping in at the eleventh hour to play Timon of Athens in the 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by Gregory Doran.
This interview, together with the others in the series (with actors such as Alan Rickman, Simon Russell Beale, Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter), is also available in the collection Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2 - Twelve Leading Actors on Twelve Key Roles by Julian Curry, with a foreword by Nicholas Hytner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Apr 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780018928

Michael Pennington

Michael Pennington has played a variety of leading roles in the West End, for the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the National Theatre and for the English Shakespeare Company, of which he was co-founder and joint Artistic Director from 1986-1992. He has also directed several productions of Shakespeare's plays, including Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Book preview

Michael Pennington

on

Timon

Timon of Athens (1605–7)

Royal Shakespeare Company

Opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon on 24 August 1999

Directed by Gregory Doran

Designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis With Sam Dastor as Poet, Richard McCabe as Apemantus, Rupert Penry-Jones as Alcibiades, and John Woodvine as Flavius

Timon of Athens is the story of a man who goes from having everything to having nothing. It is a play of two very different halves. At first, Timon has, or thinks he has, vast wealth. He lavishes extravagant gifts on a circle of flattering, apparent friends. As a result of his profligacy he becomes bankrupt. When he asks his ‘friends’ for help, they desert him.

Timon leaves Athens, enraged, heaping curses on humankind. He goes to live in a cave in the woods, dressed in rags, seeking solitude. He digs, in search of a root to eat. Instead he finds a huge stash of gold – which is useless to him because he can’t eat it. The irony is compounded as news of his renewed wealth spreads and Timon is once again invaded by grasping visitors. He dies on a lonely beach.

Timon of Athens is one of Shakespeare’s later plays, probably not all his own work, but with passages written by Thomas Middleton. It appears to be an unfinished or abandoned text, that would have benefited from revision. The first performance on record was not until 1674. Since then it has rarely been produced, never popular, often adapted or with the text doctored one way or another. The play is something of an ugly duckling. However, its major attraction lies in passages of incandescent verse, especially in the second half, when Timon vents his rage against ungrateful man [4.1]:

                Matrons, turn incontinent,

Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,

Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the