The Alchemist
National Theatre (Olivier), London

Andrew Haydon
posted 25 September 2006

What is striking in Nicholas Hytner's new modern-dress production of The Alchemist is quite how much nastier Ben Jonson was than his near contemporary Shakespeare. What is also striking is how much less nasty Nicholas Hytner is than Ben Jonson. The Alchemist is a cynical little play which advances little more than the theory that everyone is, at root, a greedy, self-serving, conniving swine, and will rob, cheat, lie and pimp themselves in order to satisfy their ambitions for greater wealth.

Face (Simon Russell Beale), a confidence trickster working as the butler for a City doctor, has taken advantage of his master's protracted absence from home and, using the well-appointed house as a respectable front, installed co-conspirator Subtle (Alex Jennings), along with a whore, Dol Common, in order to pull off a number of complex scams on various citizens, most of which revolve around creating the illusion that Subtle, disguised as a variety of alchemists, has uncovered the secret of the Philosopher's Stone: eternal youth and the ability to turn base metals into gold,

As if to make the outrageous and often downright immoral behaviour of the two protagonists palatable, Hytner has created a very contemporary take on Jonson's play, in which no character is seriously parodied for their many and obvious vices. However, taking the play out of its original setting also has the effect of reducing what is at stake. Instead of seeing desperate con-artists, for whom discovery or failure will mean devastating poverty at best and execution at worst, we are presented with a set of scenarios where Face and Subtle's myriad con-tricks rarely rise above the level of something they are doing out of antic spirits, to divert a collection of bored clients. At no time is there any atmosphere of desperation, menace or palpable danger, which is vital to the play.

This isn't to say that Hytner has wholly bowdlerised the work; springing from the modernisation comes a new cruelty reflecting London's modern status as a multicultural metropolis. Abel Drugger, the superstitious tobacconist who is consulting Subtle over the positioning of his shop front, becomes an Indian shopkeeper, raising perhaps the loudest, and certainly guiltiest laugh of the evening when it is revealed that his shop does indeed stand on a corner. Similarly, the request of Kastril, who comes to Subtle to learn how to quarrel, is translated wholesale into a request to be taught to sound more 'street.' The subsequent parody of black youth argot is the most pointed the production gets. As with Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G, the audience isn't quite sure who or what exactly is being laughed at - the silly, posh, white boy trying to be black, or the patois and slang of black youth itself. While Sir Epicure Mammon, the gluttonous, lascivious knight, played here by Ian Richardson, is presented as nothing worse than a fond old fool with an eye for the ladies and a hearty appetite.

With each of these grotesques portrayed sympathetically - almost likeably - the play's satire is somewhat blunted. By making the protagonists loveable rogues, and their victims merely buffoons, the play's moral centre is totally shifted. Even watching this lightened version, though, the far nastier, darker moments of the script are visible, albeit buried beneath performances of unassailable lightness.

Rather than strive to get to the core of the play, Hytner has simply presented a comic classic, chucked a few of the country's best loved actors at it and made it into a fun night out. That isn't to say that there isn't much to enjoy here. The obvious relish with which Simon Russell Beale throws himself into Face's myriad disguises is a delight in itself, while Alex Jennings' turns as various whacked out hippies, loved-up cultists and fastidious Scots are a masterclass in stage-acting. It is curious, though, that where the pair convinces least is when playing Face and Subtle sans disguise, as if the mechanisms of the farce and all the energy are present, but not their roots or causes.

Till 21 November 2006.