Volume 21, Number 20 · December 12, 1974
Timon of Paris
By Elizabeth Hardwick
Timon of Athens
by William Shakespeare, French version by Jean-Claude Carrière, directed by Peter Brook
Théâtre des Bouffes-du-Nord (Paris)
Timon enters the space, a space as public and indiscriminate as a street. He is surrounded by people and yet without a setting. His claim to the space is scarcely greater than ours, the audience. Everything is bare and yet disorderly, not at all neat, not cool. Geometry is a statement, expensive; this space is a negligent, empty mess. There are sandbags, objects without character, defiant instead, merely useful to sit on, to form a circle for the dinner parties that are the peculiar and essential symbolic actions of Timon's life. The sandbags are not attractive; they are just sand, dirt and absence. The bareness and the omissions are not in themselves to be called interesting, unless their interest is to make us happy that the scenic hole, the theatrical blank, is not to be filled with Greek tunics, Shakespearean ruffles, and page boys carrying platters on their palms.
Review, 2632 words
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