The Alchemist

Ben Jonson’s Jacobean jack-in-the-box of a play, The Alchemist, is a side-splitting, screwball farce of magical proportions.

A quick-witted trio of tricksters fleece an onslaught of greedy sheep with their virtuosic ability to improvise amidst increasingly frantic comings and goings.

London. 1606. It’s plague time again. When a wealthy gentleman flees to the country, his trusted servant opens his house to a pair of con artists and sets up a den of criminal capitalism. Claiming alchemical powers, the quick-witted trio fleece an onslaught of greedy sheep with their virtuosic ability to improvise amidst increasingly frantic comings and goings. It’s comic gold with dupes, double-dupes, duels, disguises, and a lucky flea named Lewis.

This new version of Jonson’s rowdy comedy classic is adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Jesse Berger – the pair that created the Red Bull Theater’s 2017 production of the hit comedy The Government Inspector.