Channel: Entertainment
Uploaded: July 24, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Author: ShakespeareAndMore
Length: 10:57
Rating: 5.00
Views: 173
William Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", Act 1, scene one (Arden edition), line 1 to line 225 (225: Apemantus' "Then thou liest. Look in thy last work,/where thu hast feign'd him a worthy fellow")Stanley Wells, writes in "Shakespeare Quarterly" about these Johnathan Miller productionsSt: If production styles have not on the whole been especially illuminating or penetrating, they have nevertheless had their originalities and even theirbrilliancies...Still, more of a director's success was Jonathan Miller's handling of the first part of "Timon of Athens", a difficult because partiallyunrealized play. Dr. Miller's skillfully filled in the crevices of the text, setting the opening scene at a lavish reception which made an appropriatebackground to Jonathan Pryce's portrayal of Timon's touchingly obsessive generosity. A realistic, and voraciously devoured, banquet reinforced the recurrent imagery of food and eating which is an essential part of Shakespeare's exploration of false and true values; and the masque was an admirable, genuinely and relevantly educational piece of period reconstruction. This seemed to me to be the kind of directorial brilliance which serves the play, realization rather than self-assertive interpretation.