This is not Ben Jonson's satire of charlatanism, but an adaptation of the novel by Paulo Coelho - the literary guru of personal development junkies.
His scenario is winsomely simple and wholesome: a romantic Spanish shepherd boy dreams of finding great riches buried in the Egyptian pyramids. His journey through the Sahara Desert leads him past warring dervishes to an oasis graced by blushing Arabian beauties, and into the hands of a mysterious alchemist. This alchemist teaches him that true wealth lies not in material riches but in personal integration - a line that sadly never cuts it with the bank manager.
The true wealth of this production, deemed suitable for children of eight and over, likewise lies in its style. Dressed in loose cotton smocks and playing bongos and sitars, with plenty of Moorish wailing thrown in, the barefoot cast look and sound as if they've just got back from a yoga holiday in Goa. In fact, they hail from Cornwall.
Still, their high-fibre performance is full of theatrical antioxidants designed to cleanse the audience of all toxic spiritual scepticism. They cavort about on a platform of home-made wooden blocks, using little more than woolly hats to become a flock of sheep and puppet camel-heads, which form a desert caravan.
You could say that the recipe for the production's success was blocks, flocks and four snorting camels. However there is a serious side to the aerobic endeavour. Just as our hero shepherd boy must surrender to the forces of the universe to discover the metaphorical treasure of his inner self, so the audience has to suspend disbelief to recreate the imaginative truth of the tale.
Coelho is obviously a master of this kind of storytelling and the company embodies the spirit of his writing like true disciples. It is interesting to note, however, that in the end the shepherd boy is rewarded with a pot of actual gold. No doubt his next ordeal will be among real-life investment fund managers.
Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist
