Thank goodness for bad plays. Bad plays performed decently, that is — like the Rhode Island Theatre Ensemble production of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (through February 4). It can help us appreciate that most theatrical problems are solved before they ever come to our attention.
One of the last tragedies that Shakespeare wrote, Timon is generally regarded as being incomplete, abandoned when he lost interest in solving its problems of choppy structure. Many scholars think that it was an unsuccessful collaboration with playwright Thomas Middleton, who is credited with contributing to the witches’ conversation over the cauldron in Macbeth.
Timon (Alan Hawkridge) is a good-natured, apparently prosperous lord of ancient Athens, generous to a fault. At the outset, much time is spent showing examples of his munificence, as he lays out an opulent banquet table and presents gifts to friends. One person at the feast is attending only to observe the hypocritical behavior; philosopher Apemantus (Mark Carter) is a cynic who doesn’t believe for a minute that Timon’s ostentatious virtue is truly appreciated by his flattering guests.
The ax falls when Timon’s creditors start demanding payment. His steward Flavius (Scott Levine) says that he tried to tell him many times, but Timon wouldn’t listen to concerns that he was spending beyond his means. He can’t sell his land because it is already mortgaged. He’s broke. At first optimistic that his friends will bail him out, Timon learns otherwise, refusal after refusal. The erstwhile sycophants see no irony in turning down loans while wearing gifts that Timon had to borrow to pay for. He invites them to one last feast, and the once-again friendly crowd sits down to a meal of stones, boiling water, and a tirade of abuse from an apoplectic host.
There is a subplot, in which a military captain, Alcibiades (Chris Perrotti), presents a contrasting example of loyal friendship that also ends in disaster. He begs the senators of Athens to not execute a soldier under his command for killing a man in a quarrel. They refuse, and Alcibiades grows so quarrelsome himself that he ends up being banished from the city.
That exile comes in handy when he later comes across Timon in the mountains, where he has holed up in a cave, cursing Athenians and swearing never to return. Philosopher Apemantus shows up and commiserates in a bout of misanthropic headshaking. Loyal servant Flavius finds him there and offers unflagging support as well as his meager savings. But since likelihood never was a high priority for Shakespeare, Timon’s dire financial predicament is solved in a finger snap. He finds a stash of gold coins in the cave — money ex machina, you might say. (The staging is woefully static here, when such an emotionally charged event should explode the man into action, if only to hurl the coins away.) The cash comes in handy for financing Alcibiades, who hires soldiers and marches on Athens to settle their joint grudges.
