Theatre

‘An Alchemy of Flesh’ is constructed like a Möbius strip. It appears to wind up right back where it started, but thanks to an imperceptible twist in its construction we end up on a different side of the starting point.

Answer machine messages play into an empty room. Melinda’s lover Louis has seen her out with another man – her sister’s husband Daryl. He is outside her apartment making threats. Blackout. Susan and Daryl let themselves into Melinda’s apartment. Melinda has left the couple a suicide message recorded in that very room. The message ends with a gunshot, but there is no body in the room.

The play starts as a thriller; Susan and Daryl want to find out what happened. Daryl doesn’t want to involve the police. Something is up, but we don’t know what. Then there is a scene where Susan puts on Melinda’s jacket and gradually becomes Melinda. Clever seamless switch of time-frame and location, or is Susan really Melinda? Then Louis enters Daryl’s house goes to the off-stage bedroom and apparently shoots Daryl. He staggers downstairs and collapses, Susan returns and the man who entered as Louis seems to wake up as Daryl. Are the two playing an elaborate game or are they both subject to bewildering ‘Lost Highway’-style transformations? The answer is never made clear. Julio Maria Martino’s production offers a spirited, if incredibly dimly lit, stab at David Hauptschein’s intriguing play. Whether or not it succeeds depends largely on one’s taste for the opaque.