Written by Ben Jonson in 1610, The Alchemist is one of the most popular Renaissance plays outside of the works of Shakespeare. Described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as having one of the three most perfect plots in literature, this frenetic comedy is generally accepted to be Jonson's finest.

When his master leaves London to avoid an outbreak of The Plague, scheming manservant Face has the house to himself. He uses the opportunity to embark on a series of scams with two con artists, Subtle and Doll Common.

Subtle sets up as an alchemist and proclaims he can make The Philosopher's Stone, turning lead into gold and revealing the secret of eternal life.

"We're playing it almost as a farce," says director Matthew Williamson. "You have a procession of people turning up who want something for nothing."

Jonson has been described as "one of theatre's great haters" and The Alchemist contains few sympathetic characters. Instead, the audience is invited to laugh at the way the rogues manipulate the greed, gullibility, vanity and delusions of their victims.

While no section of Jacobean society escaped Jonson's withering gaze, the author reserved a particular contempt for his Puritan characters, after his own dissolute lifestyle had caused him to clash with the Protestant zealots.

"There's only one nice character in the whole play and that's Abel Drugger, a tobacconist," Williamson explains. "He's thick but all he wants is 17th-century feng shui. He wants them to tell him how to best lay his shop out to make the most profit.

"Even the one person who sees through them, Surly, as soon as he realises there's a rich widow involved, he starts angling to get her. So even he isn't whiter than white."

The con artists' ruses succeed at first but begin to unravel as they display the same human weaknesses they exploit in their marks.

"They're fine until everyone starts arriving at once. Because Subtle and the others are being different things to different people, it all gets terribly complicated," Williamson laughs. "It's just absolute hell. Poor Subtle is trying to be Scottish to one person, French to somebody else and a commoner to another character. It never stops."

The costumes for this production have been loaned from the National Theatre in London, which has recently started hiring outfits to amateur productions. The venue staged its own revival of the play two years ago, starring Simon Russell Beale, and Williamson is not surprised by its enduring appeal.

"I think it's still relevant because people are still the same. It's the equivalent of those internet scams when you get an email saying, If you send me £27, I'll send you £4 million that I've spirited out of somewhere in Africa'. The only reason these people get tricked is because they want something for nothing."

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