Judging by how rarely it comes around, Timon of Athens seems destined to remain something of an anomalous outlier in the Shakespearian canon. The production mounted by Theatre for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, Brooklyn, starring Kathryn Hunter as Timon, is described in the program as taking place “sometime in the near future,” but its opening is very much of the present gilded age. The play was a favorite of Karl Marx’s, who saw it as an illustration of the idea that “money is the alienated ability of mankind,” and its premise is instantly familiar to audiences who may never have encountered it but can recognize swiftly that they have been living it.
Source : A Timon for Our Time
