Sport for Jove’s five star (Sydney Morning Herald) production of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens is going from outdoors production, to fully fledged indoor mainstage play at the Seymour Centre’s York Theatre. It’s described as perhaps “Shakespeare’s Most Relevant” play, so what can audiences expect?
Theatre Thoughts heard from Timon’s director, Margaret Thanos, as well as Sport for Jove’s Artistic Director, Damien Ryan, who is also taking on the mantle of the play’s titular character, on the weight of the play itself in our modern era.
In the same vein as Succession, King Timon (of Athens, surprisingly) thought he had it all. Friendship, loyalty, Love. But the actual weight of all these things is unveiled when Timon’s luxurious life comes crashing down around him. Barred from his home and thrown into the wilderness, Timon’s short stint of bad luck finds golden fortune once more, but at what price does the weight of this new fortune come. Revenge comes in many forms, and Timon may just play with it in this second gifted chance
Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens is a black comedy dressed up as a Greek tragedy, a hilariously dark, joyfully brutal and very modern immorality tale. Dicken’s borrowed from it, Marx built a new world order out of it, our contemporary age sits squarely in its sights – and it gives you, the playgoer, an extraordinary opportunity to watch a Shakespeare play where you don’t know what happens next, have no idea how it ends, and will be surprised at every turn.
Read our review of I Hate People; or Timon of Athens from the Leura Shakespeare Festival here and then explore our chat with Thanos and Ryan below.
Timon of Athens was a great success at the Leura Shakespeare festival in 2024. What do you attribute that success to when presenting one of Shakespeare’s lesser performed pieces?
MARGARET: It really is the extraordinary work of this cast. Timon is famously a tricky problem play, and the fabulous solutions that this cast and team have put into solving the storytelling inside of the piece is what makes this production what it is. I have always felt Timon is the most relevant Shakespeare. It is all about a billionaire without emotional intelligence – a story we know all too well at the moment. It is the same reason for the success of shows like Succession. We love to see the rich behave badly, and we really want to see them punished.
DAMIEN: It’s a really bold and brave vision for the play that Margaret brought to us and it really stirred something in an audience. There is also something wonderful about seeing the ‘unknown’ work of a playwright who is so remarkable and so elite in the study of the human figure, so famous and so regularly performed and yet still available to us in completely new ways through plays like Timon that almost never sees the stage in the country. It is such a brilliant play, truly surprising and deeply contemporary.
With the return of Timon now entering into the Seymour Centre, should audiences expect anything different from the original production? How are you adapting the story with the shifting social commentary it holds?
MARGARET: It is the same show as it ever was, but with an upgrade! Rose Montgomery and Saint Clair are doing fantastic new set and lighting designs to adapt to our new venue at the York. We also have four fabulous new cast members: Jake Speer, Joseph Tanti, Jack Elliot Mitchell and Apsara Lindeman. I cannot wait for everyone to see this version.
DAMIEN: It will always feel different indoors, there is an immediately different audience/actor relationship but the capacity to deepen the quality of the mis en scene as well as the joy of a director and a group of actors re-approaching a play they have been rolling around in their minds for a couple of years is wonderful. I always like to remember that that was the original nature of theatre, things were made to stay in repertoire, not to simply disappear but to be part of a company’s DNA. It is always so fantastic to come back to something and dig further.
Margaret, when re-visiting a production you’ve previously staged, do you find any challenges or obstacles in your path?
MARGARET: I don’t know if there are challenges – just joys! It is so rare to get the change to bring your work alive for the second time. I am loving every step of improving a work that I was already incredibly proud of and I’m so grateful to Sport for Jove to be given the opportunity.
Damien, as Artistic Director of Sport for Jove, what importance do you find in staging Shakespeare’s lesser performed pieces?
DAMIEN: It has been a central tenet of our company from the beginning and it’s also why I was so keen for us to tackle Timon. We brought some of Australia’s rarest encounters with Shakespeare’s lesser performed works – Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well That Ends Well, Richard II, Antony and Cleopatra, Venus and Adonis, the Sonnets, Timon of Athens and Marlowe’s Edward II — these are extraordinary pieces of writing by the same minds that created some of the most indelible works in human history but they almost never see the stage in Australia. It is a brilliant and frankly rare opportunity to see a Shakespeare play where you literally don’t know what will happen next. I think of them as brand new Shakespeare’s – hot off the presses – because that is essentially the audience’s experience of them.
In order for audiences to fully prepare themselves for the riotous nature of the world of Timon, what texts should they watch or read to start getting a taste of this production’s flavour?
MARGARET: Well, I think a watch of The Wolf of Wall Street would be in order. It was a big influence on me when making the first production. That or Disney’s Hercules which I recall watching in a cafe the morning of first rehearsal!
I Hate People; or Timon of Athens plays at the Seymour Centre for a strictly limited season from 12th – 15th June. Book tickets here
