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THEATREWORLD INTERNET MAGAZINE REVIEW:-

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PHALLACY

By Carl Djerassi

now playing at New End Theatre until May 14 2005

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' Thus John Keats, poet and scientist - he qualified as a doctor - elegantly contradicts received wisdom and links those two auld enemies Art and Science.

Mind you, in the olden days, there was not such a specialist divide as there is today; those golden days of yore when accomplished people could turn their hands to say discovering gravity in the morning, and follow that with playing in a string quartet after a good lunch. We have all witnessed narrow-minded artists opining that only art is good and everything else is mind-numbing and mundane, as well as scientists in their ivory towers sniffing down at the ignorant hoi polloi and proclaiming that we can't do, believe, or have for breakfast anything until it has been scientifically proven - by them of course.

Playwright Carl Djerassi is a citizen of both the artistic and scientific communities, as Keats was, and his latest play Phallacy takes a full-frontal look at this social divide. The fascinating main issue is whether a work of art that is aesthetically pleasing, becomes more so the more ancient that we believe it is.

At the centre of Djerassi's fictional controversy is an almost perfect bronze statue of a gorgeous naked young man. The art historian Regina Leitner-Opfermann has been tenderly guarding this young man's honour for years, in her job as chief curator of antiquities in a Viennese museum. She has built her reputation on him, has written a book explaining the evidence for him being of ancient Roman origin, and is taking advantage of the lecture circuit too to publicise her beliefs.

Enter Rex Stolzfuss, scientist extraordinaire, bent on proving her wrong through analysis of the metal and the construction techniques. He is convinced that our young man came of age at a time no earlier than the Renaissance, and is no more than a copy of the ancient original. But, of course, that still makes him a good 400 years old.

These two divas clash relentlessly amidst threats of exposés and analyses of the documentary evidence - which may even turn up a more interesting history. Djerassi here conjures two Renaissance figures to tell their story: Don Juan of Austria and his estranged mother. There is also a rather superficial plot device involving a love affair between the young assistants of the art historian and scientist, culminating in a 'Harry met Sally' type double telephone conversation.

But overall, this is intriguing and thought-provoking stuff, and very well acted. And, for argument's sake, I think that Keats's Grecian Urn got it spot on.

Reviewed by Julia Hickman for Theatreworld Internet Magazine