Let’s start with a word of praise for my
favourite supporting player this season at Stratford-upon-Avon,
scandalously denied a biography in the programme. It’s a stuffed
crocodile, first seen hanging from the ceiling in
Love For Love several months ago
and now back for
The Alchemist.
Perhaps director Polly Findlay has read the late, great Terry
Pratchett, who observed that such a prop “is absolutely standard
equipment in any properly-run magical establishment.”
It certainly adds to the air of hocus-pocus and flummery here as Face,
a butler left in charge of a London townhouse while his master flees to
the country for fear of the plague, and Subtle, a fraudulent alchemist
with whom Face teams up, set about bilking all-comers of whatever they
have, from a twist or two of tobacco to a fortune in gold. (They also
use the croc as a novelty piggy-bank for their swag.)
The third conspirator, the whore Dol Common, poses as everyone from the
queen of the fairies to a half-mad nymphomaniac noblewoman. Subtle at
one point describes her workings on a victim thus: “She must milk his
epidydimis.” Wonderful phrase – it’s virtually incomprehensible (the
epidydimis is part of the male genital plumbing), but there’s no doubt
that it’s positively filthy.
Shakespeare’s near contemporary Ben Jonson loved language of all kinds,
from high-flown classical verbiage to good old downright vulgarity: the
second line of this play is “I fart at thee!” And in this, one of his
greatest plays, he’s supplied himself with a rich variety of characters
to give voice to all kinds of words. There’s honest Abel Drugger, who
just wants a kind of Jacobean
feng
shui reading for his new shop; nobleman Sir Epicure Mammon and
God-botherer Tribulation Wholesome, who are both after the
Philosopher’s Stone; and Kastril, a young nobleman who wants to learn
how to argufy like the city’s angry young blades... quite apart from
the tricksters themselves, who come out with all kinds (and I mean
all kinds) of nonsensical jargon.
It’s basically an excuse for a series of comic turns, that grow
increasingly entangled in the manner of the best farces, until
everything unravels with even more vim and vigour. Findlay and her
cast, though, don’t engage in frenzied farcical rushing about; these
are practised con-men, after all, unflappable even when pretending to
row with each other. Ken Nwosu as Face and Mark Lockyer as Subtle are
masterly, though Tom McCall steals his scenes as Kastril by managing
somehow to be languid and turbulent at the same time. Jonson gets a raw
deal these days, with allegations that he’s dense and incomprehensible.
But pay no attention to those kind of alligators.
Written for The Lady.