[In the following review, Torrens praises Michael Langham's National Theatre production of Timon of Athens, claiming that “against all odds” it enthralled Broadway audiences.]

The National Actors Theatre, promoted by Tony Randall, is now in its third season, after a faltering start (but a brilliant Saint Joan last year). It aims to keep the classics of drama alive on Broadway, and at modest prices.

This season opened with Timon of Athens, a late play by Shakespeare about a rich man, prodigally generous, who turns sour and vindictive when the recipients of his bounty reject him in his need. Strange scheduling choice, Timon of Athens. It has the stiffness of a morality play, yet against all odds it enthralls the Broadway audience.

Perhaps Bertold Brecht is to be thanked for having changed audience expectations with his Theater of Alienation. Such drama, keeping us at a distance from characters, exposing a vitiated humanity with its dark humor, has become the staple of The Public Theatre, legacy of Joseph Papp. (In The Treatment, a recent offering at the Public, two “story consultants” entice a young woman to recount her bizarre marital woes. Plundering and distorting her private life for onscreen presentation, they corrupt her in the process.) The startling thing is to see how dark and scathing Shakespeare himself could be. But with him the panorama of greed, flattery and ingratitude is lit up by a moral center—in Timon by the honest bookkeeper and steward Flavius (played by Jack Ryland), plus a trio of faithful servants.

This production of Timon never flags, thanks to Michael Langham, its seasoned director. Thirty years ago at the Stratford Festival, Duke Ellington wrote background music to Langham's Timon. Again here the Jazz Age music sets the tone. The angular, abstract stage, designed by Douglas Stein and reminiscent of a painting by de Chirico (public surfaces empty of life), begins by disgorging all of the toadies, dressed in dark colors, to await their prodigal patron. Into their midst, rumple-haired and buoyant in a gleaming white suit, come the munificent Timon (played expansively by Brian Bedford). If he reminds us of Jay Gatsby, this is intentional. Gifts are given, a sumptuous feast laid out. From the sidelines a hard-bitten philosopher, Apemantus (John Franklyn-Robbins), tries needling some sense into Timon, but in vain.

Meanwhile the money has run out and debts have been run up. Timon sends to the parasites whom he has enriched—one in his steam bath (believably recreated), one at his massage—for loans. They put a bold face on their excuses. Timon invites them to one last banquet, with the fanciest of place settings, and serves them up empty tureens.

Fortune has turned its wheel. As Apemantus tells Timon, “The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends.” Driven by poverty into the woods to subsist on roots, the expansive Timon constricts into a savage misanthrope (a stock figure on the London stage at the time of composition), resolving to make his city suffer. The latter half of the play seethes with his pithy and derisive observations upon humanity.

Timon makes the sudden and quite unlikely find of a cache of buried gold. He will use it, he decides, to tempt and even work destruction upon his townsmen. Mostly he bestows it on the young officer Alcibiades, who, with his rebel fighters, is set to exact revenge from Athens because of a death sentence coldly passed in court upon his companion at arms.

At the play's end we learn that Timon has died of his mind's sickness, leaving only a bitter epitaph—but not before realizing and proclaiming the goodness of his steward. Alcibiades, after a battle staged impressively with gunpowder flashes and explosions, has Athens at his mercy. But then he spares the city, singling out for execution only the enemies of Timon. Society, purged for a time, reverts to peace. It is a resolution highly Shakespearean, though not to be looked for in our post-Brechtian dramas. No wonder the Bard still pleases!