Theatre review: Timon of Athens/The Taming of the Shrew

What a swell party it is, in the first half of Jennifer Dick’s fascinating production of Timon Of Athens, playing at the Kibble Palace in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. There are bottles of fizz dotted everywhere around the elegant glass-house, sitting on little tables next to the wind-up gramophone and Timon’s box of jewels; for this production is set in the roaring 1920s, and imagines Timon as a gorgeous and privileged young hostess in a slinky white beaded gown, a little like Chekhov’s Ranevskaya in her utter indifference to the value of money, and of the priceless gifts she constantly gives away to her coterie of hangers-on.