SIR,—Your dramatic critic's notice of the produc- tion of The
Alchemist at the Old Vic contains so many inaccuracies that I am obliged for the first and I hope last time to write, as a member of the cast, daring to criticise the critic; almost invariably a dangerous and profitless pursuit. However.
Mr. Gascoigne's basic objection regarding the textual alterations is reasonable; but his quotes from this production to support his views arc almost all inaccurate!
His quoted example 'Avoid, Sathan . . etc.' is not cut.
The sums paid by the Puritans are different to onson's.
He (Mr. Gascoigne) becomes hopelessly confused between Drugger and Dapper in referring to one's gold coin and the other's gold token.
Guthrie's line about the season ticket to Grove Park does replace one of lonson's; it is not 'a free bonus.'
No character in this production uses a limousine to visit the alchemist.
Finally, your critic's claim that The Alchemist, in its own context, is fully relevant to a modern audience: a generalised inquiry among actors and audience would certainly result in the general opinion that Jonson's plays are about twicc as dif- ficult to understand. let alone read, as any com- parative author's. Gascoigne himself admits that this play contains more precise references to con- temporary life and manners than any of Shake- speare's plays'; can this fact alone make for 'full relevance' to a modern audience?
Coda: Mr. Gascoigne must surely be alone in thinking The Alchemist a 'marvellous' play?
LEO MCKERN 38 Percy Road, Hampton, Middlesex [Bamber Gascoigne writes: 'I don't know what phantom figures Mr. McKern hears each night, but it turns out (I've just had the details read to me from the prompt book) that the sums paid by the Puritans in this production are Ben lonson's—£30 and £90. I was wrong in thinking that the "unclean birds" had been cut, and now I see why. When reading the play afterwards, I was sure that I hadn't heard this splendid joke at the Old Vic. The reason was simply that in Guthrie's production I hadn't been able to understand it. Instead of Ananias pointing to a great ruff round Surly's neck, and saying it reminds him of lewd mating birds, he now points to a bow-tie—and what could be less bird-like? I wonder how many of the audience do see the joke in its new emancipated form. I admit my own inaccuracy, but I think the incident adds further proof of how Guthrie's approach ruins perfectly valid ideas. 'On the other minor points: I brought "limousine" and "alchemist" together because they were Guthrie's own two examples (and if we're to be precisely accurate, there is no mention at all of "limousine" in the text now, in spite of Guthrie's programme note); I grant that I gave a line of Drueger's to Dapper, but it turns out that the Guthrie emendation is just as pointless in its proper context; and I failed to relate the Grove Park season ticket line to its original simply because it bore no conceivable relation to it.
'If Mr. IvIcKern knows no one who thinks The Alchemist is a marvellous play, his attitude to it is presumably shared by the entire cast and manage- ment of the Old Vie. This is a depressing thought.'— Editor, Spectator.)
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