´óÏó´«Ã½

Here's a piece of trivia for you. What was Karl Marx's favourite Shakespearean play? Answer: Timon of Athens. That's the kind of information you discover in the programme accompanying the new co-production of Timon by and the RSC. And you can tell why Marx was so impressed: the story of a wealthy man's decline into poverty which challenges an audience to think again about our sense of material security in the world.

This is far from the best play Shakespeare ever wrote -- in fact, we can't be sure just how much of the text is Shakespeare's and how much is by a collaborator or adaptor (most scholars seem to think Thomas Middleton has a large hand in it). Critics typically describe the play as "mysterious" or "experimental" or "unfinished". And even the most committed theatre-goers will rarely have seen a production -- in fact, Shakespeare didn't see a production in his lifetime either.

So I've now seen more Shakespeare than Shakespeare: I was at the opening night of Cardboard Citizen's Timon this week, in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the RSC's Complete Works project. Adrian Jackson and Sarah Woods have produced a terrific adaptation which sets the text against the backdrop of a contemporary motivational speech experience -- the bard has fallen into the hands of the gurus of management speak, goal-reaching, and self-actualisation.

I was in Stratford with my Festival Night's producer, Sean McGuire, and we happened to be staying at the same hotel as the cast -- just across from the Swan Theatre. Needless to say, the hotel bar was filled with impressively-projected voices until the wee hours as we toasted the bard's most under-appreciated leading role.

You can see my report on the play on Monday's Festival Nights programme on ´óÏó´«Ã½2. Better still, see the . You won't regret it.