Synopsis
Telling of the experiments and misadventures of two charlatan scientists, Fernando and Reynaldo in Renaissance Italy, the play provides an invigorating evening of surreal and silly entertainment. Bursting with clowning, caricature and competition, the actors play twenty-five parts between them they try to discover the ingredients of a love potion, the secret of alchemy and the true nature of the earth.
This is coarse acting, or what the author likes to call ‘hamper’ acting … everything you need to play a myriad of characters you have in one costume hamper!
The play relies on a ‘large’ acting style to allow the audience to easily differentiate between the many different characters that they play. Changes can take place behind one screen though the more screens you have the better as you can spread out the costumes more effectively and allow for a variety of different entrances and exits.
The key trick to the play is that the two actors playing the parts need to be seen as rivals and much of the playing is a form of competition, (ie who can be bigger than the other character and so on). This builds towards the climax at the end.
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