Timon of Athens
2019: Rhodri Huw

This is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s version of the play. Apparently all Shakespeare needs to be subjected to some kind of gender-bending treatment, and here Timon is inexplicably (but somehow predictably) a woman. It makes nonsense of the historical frame of reference, of course, as well as of Shakespeare’s storytelling, but that doesn’t apparently matter to the RSC. Apemantus is also a woman, as is Alcibiades. Don’t ask why — there is no good reason for it, as far as I can see, though I get the impression that even asking why is somehow an impertinence. I’m sure there is some political axe to grind here, and I’ve missed the memo — and hence I’m probably committed some transgression by even admitting that it makes no sense to me. But there it is. If someone can explain it to me without condescension or ranting, I’d take it as a favor.

Filling the title role is Kathryn Hunter. Setting aside the unnecessary and arbitrary decision to make all the leading male characters into women, she’s worth watching. Hunter is a great actress, known in particular for her remarkable physicality, but her talents extend well beyond that. She played Puck in the gymnastic Julie Taymor version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Puck’s gender is more or less indifferent, and her performance is dazzling. She also plays a witch in the Denzel Washington version of Macbeth, and there she is quite impressive too. Some may best recall her as Arabella Figg from the Harry Potter movies — the squib with nerves of steel in the face of dementors — where she didn’t have any particular physical demands, but still filled the role wonderfully. Here her somewhat froggy voice is arguably an impediment to the music of Shakespeare’s verse; and while she often plays roles where she passes as male, here she is gowned in cloth of gold and referred to as “Lady Timon” — indisputably female.

It would be churlish not to respect the considerable artistry here; it is a colorful and striking performance, with considerable acting talent on display, but it does seem to have subordinated Shakespeare’s play to goal of hammering home its silly agenda. It continues to point to a tiresome future for a once-great theatrical enterprise that had a purpose and a focus, but which now seems to have devolved into a narcissistic virtue-signaling beacon of progressivism, with nothing else to say. Shakespeare is fast disappearing in the rear-view mirror of the Royal Shakespeare Company — no more than the pretext for gathering to watch a play that has been more or less completely overhauled by the company. What is left? Is it now just the Royal Company? The Royal Company of what?

Buy this play at Amazon on DVD