SOURCE: Watson, William Van. “Timon of Athens.” Theatre Journal 48, no. 1 (1996): 98-9.

In the following review, Watson discusses an Italian production of Timon of Athens, directed by Walter Pagliaro.

Graffiti in a working class Roman neighborhood reads: “For Berlusconi, you are neither man nor woman but consumer.” For four decades Italy had the largest and, with its Gramscian roots, most independent-minded Communist party in Western Europe. The collapse of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe signaled a crisis in the Italian left, now inaccurately associated with the economic woes of the welfare state. Silvio Berlusconi filled this perceived power vacuum by forging alliances with the radical right and running on a platform of consumerism, capitalism, affluence, and greed. Whereas Reagan used the media, Berlusconi actually owns it, lurching toward telefascism with attempted takeovers of competing channels, networks which had historically been affiliated with oppositional political parties.

Given such a...