Peering Over The Fiscal Cliff

I saw the wholly laudable National Theatre production of Timon of Athens last week, another very worthwhile day trip to that London. The professional critics have had their say so Simon Russell Beale needs no extra boosting from this amateur but there was much to admire and stimulate even beyond his central brilliance: the staging, Hilton McRae as Apemantus, the not so sly digs at certain celebrities (I wonder if Tracy Emin saw herself), the seamless editing of the difficult (and some argue incomplete) text and, not least, the adequacy of the pre-performance sauvignon blanc. It is a play that sits very nicely in an atmosphere of capitalistic self-doubt. Its run was sponsored by Travelex - money changers in the cultural temple.

I saw Timon whilst in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged, a novel to which I will return in a later blog but whose themes, much as your modern bog-standard American liberals might like to deny it, chime rather nicely with this unfamiliar corner of Shakespeare. And by another nice coincidence this all sits with rehearsing An Inspector Calls and playing the tragic apologist for 'hard-headed practical men of business' Arthur Birling. Arthur's not all bad you know, but his wife, well that's a different matter.

And just to bring all this into sharper focus we have had an American election which was fought between two schools of legalised plunder - immoral capital and thieving state. As the song goes, this is an age of miracle and wonder, but it is also an age of moral vacuum. But hey ho, it's only a game and, as my old mate Arthur Birling suggests, a man has to make his own way.