SOURCE: “Athenian Problem Play Tails Off with Bitterness.” Financial Times (27 August 1999): 12.

In the following review, the critic emphasizes the shortcomings of Gregory Doran's 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Timon of Athens as well as the shortcomings of Shakespeare's original play.

“What a dreadfully dull play,” remarked the gent behind me to his companion on exiting the theatre. Whilst I would not go nearly as far as that, nevertheless an air of incompleteness hangs over Timon Of Athens: there is no record of its performance during Shakespeare's lifetime, and scholars speculate that it may be a draft or an incomplete collaborative work. The RSC has implicitly acknowledged its problematic nature, in that Gregory Doran's production is the company's first of the play since 1980.

Doran maintains a tone of campy exuberance through the first half, as we see first Timon's largesse to an endless flattering stream of Athenian dignitaries, artists...