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Show: The Alchemist
Society: Royal Shakespeare Company – RSC (professional)
Venue: Barbican Theatre
Credits: Ben Jonson
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 14/09/2016
The Alchemist
Chris Abbott | 15 Sep 2016 10:47am
Photo: Helen Maybanks (c) RSC
One of the audience benefits of the repertory system that once existed in many British theatres was the opportunity to see versatile actors playing a wide range of character parts, often quite different from the one they had played in a previous production. An actor with a lead part in one production could be offered only a cough and a spit in the next one; but some actors could make much from the opportunity. The very funny production of The Alchemist by the RSC at the Barbican Theatre sees many of the cast from Dr Faustus cast aside their masks and sombre clothing and take on the guise of a wide range of inhabitants of early seventeenth century Blackfriars.
Like an early version of Ayckbourn, Ben Jonson throws his characters together in a single room and over a few hours. What follows is a feast of character acting together with a frantic and yet controlled pace which has something of a prototype farce about it though like so many in that genre it tends to run out of steam a little near the end.
Playwright Stephen Jeffreys has filleted and added to the text sensitively and this shortened version, although still running more than two and a half hours, is both coherent and satisfying. To see Ian Redford falling to the floor and then attempting to right himself like an overbalanced tortoise is just one example of how this company can make much from little. Redford’s Sir Epicure holds the attention whenever he appears, as do many of the gullible of Blackfriars, from Richard Leeming’s ever-hopeful and plaintive Abel Drugger to Tom McCall, surely one of the angriest of angry boys ever to play the role of Kastril.
As Dapper, the lawyer’s clerk, Joshua McCord is convincingly bewildered by the duplicitousness of the big city and Tim Samuels as the rather sharper Sir Pertinax sees through the lot of them but also gets to go over the top gloriously as an invented Spanish knight. The Anabaptists from Amsterdam are played by John Cummins and Timothy Speyer, always suitably ridiculous, whether hurtling through doors or down stairs, prostrating themselves on stage or convincing themselves that it is perfectly Godly to turn base metal to gold.
Rosa Robson’s winsome Dame Pliant provides further plot complications, and all of this exemplary character acting revolves around our three scheming con artists. Siobhan McSweeney’s enjoyable Dol Common, although somewhat in thrall to her accomplices, is possibly the sharpest of the three of them and this is a performance which convincingly reveals the person beneath the plot device, whether reappearing in disguise or taking the place of the crocodile hanging from the ceiling.
As the instigator of many of the schemes of the trio, Mark Lockyer’s Subtle begins at a rapid pace and then mostly increases it. This is a commanding performance, greatly enhanced by the choice of wig. Finally, Ken Nwosu as Face establishes an easy confidentiality with the audience, whether appealing to them for suggestions, leaping from the stage to join them or when addressing them directly at the end of the performance, about which more should not be said but which provides an entirely satisfactory conclusion to the evening.
Polly Findlay directs this definitive production of The Alchemist, finding the contemporary in the piece and ensuring that narrative is clear, characterisation is apposite and pace is maintained. The candle-lit and atmospheric set is by Helen Goddard and composer Corin Buckeridge adds a witty and entertaining score which gains laughs before the action even begins. The RSC are to be welcomed back to the Barbican, especially when they are in such fine form.
- : admin
- : 14/09/2016