Word: alchemists
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dawn, the tarantula twosome slithers, separately, into the bedroom of Malcolm and Kate, and on encountering a rickety desk that Malcolm has spent all night assembling, Trevor, with one helping touch, reduces it to a pile of kindling. Ayckbourn is an alchemist of incipient disaster, and his absurdist humor cuts through the veneer of domestic tranquillity with a serrated edge. Yet his surgery is oddly healing, a kind of revelation through copious laughter and minimal malice...
...time, plague was in the air, and the death of kings implied an unimaginable catastrophe. Racism and superstition prevailed. Occupations that are now obsolete dot his plays: cooper, wheelwright, alchemist, bellman. His language glitters with marvelous words that have, alas, also become obsolete: porpentine (porcupine); swound (faint); german (akin); caitiff (wretch); borthens (the hair of corpses); grise (a stair); bisson (blind). However immortal, Shakespeare, no less than Aristophanes or Mozart, needs his modern interpreters...
...Alchemist. The classic by Shakespeare's rival Ben Jonson. Presented by the MIT Dramashop at MIT Kresge Auditorium Little Theatre, February 13 and 14, at 8 p.m. Tickets...
...Alchemist. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that the Alchemist was one of the three greatest plots in the all literature (Tom Jones and Oedipus Rex were the other two.) It's a well-made play, to be sure, but don't expect anything that great. The production is good, with no gimmicks or flourishes...
...Alchemist runs smoothly, on an elegant set whose only drawback is that it's such a good suggestion of serious occult mystery that you almost forget how much of a con game The Alchemist is. Mosca's direction is quick, sure, and creative, though the first act only smolders. The Alchemist isn't the kind of cosmically reconciling play that Shakespeare's best comedies are, but it offers its own kind of delights. Most of them come through in this production...