National Theatre: Timon of Athens

Synopsis

Nicholas Hytner directs this National Theatre production of one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays, a surrealist moral fable about debt, conspicuous consumption and financial ruin written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton. Simon Russell Beale stars in the title role as the profligate Timon, who vastly outspends his resources and eventually finds himself banished to a literal and emotional wasteland, where he lives off roots and vents a colourful outpouring of ever more bizarre curses on a morally bankrupt Athens.