The making of a modern Timon
Simon Russell Beale is sitting squatly in a spillage of rank refuse " discarded take-away cartons, crushed cans, exhausted pill-packets et al " on the revolve in the National Theatre's huge Rehearsal Room One. He is wearing a dosser-style mac over his rehearsal uniform of black T-shirt and jeans; there's a supermarket trolley stuffed with flattened cardboard boxes at his side; and, in the role of Timon, he has just b…