"Timon of Athens,’’ a play by William Shakespeare . . . oh, but with this play nothing, not even the basics, is that simple. So let’s start over.
“Timon of Athens,’’ a play probably written by William Shakespeare, but most likely in collaboration with someone else, generally assumed to have been Thomas Middleton, maybe in 1607, is rarely produced because it is (choose one):
A. Wildly uneven
B. Weakly structured
C. Centered on an unknown, unsympathetic misanthrope
D. Too depressing
E. Unlikely to draw a crowd because of all of the above
Well, go ahead, choose all. But then go and see the Actors’ Shakespeare Project production anyway. Develop your own thoughts on this brusque, intermittently brilliant, and tantalizing corner of the canon, at Midway Studios, in Fort Point Channel, because you’re not likely to see another professional staging in this lifetime. You’re certainly not likely to see a more persuasive one.
Bill Barclay, who is best known as a composer, here and at Lenox’s Shakespeare & Company, also acts, directs, and lectures on Shakespeare. All his experiences come to bear in his set design, song composition, and, especially, direction of this show. With a post-industrial wasteland of a set, a crew of highly disciplined actors running choreographed riot in multiple roles, and appropriately clangorous songs, Barclay here crafts a “Timon’’ that is mostly as riveting as it is rough-hewn.
The director has made judicious cuts and rearrangements, so that the play’s flaws, though still visible, are less distracting than they might be. And what comes across is a strong narrative of Timon, a dangerously generous man who turns dangerously enraged when his fortunes fall and his sycophantic friends fall away with them. The parallel subplot, in which the Athenian captain Alcibiades also turns against his fellow citizens, remains only loosely hitched to the main story, but the strength of Barclay’s design — and the starkly black, white, or gray costumes by Anna-Alisa Belous — help hold things together.
So too does the mesmerizing performance of Daniel Berger-Jones as Alcibiades, moving from charming youth to incendiary fury when his plea for mercy toward a fellow soldier goes unheard. Berger-Jones’s delivery of the disenchanted captain’s curse on Athens is nothing short of chilling.