The Alchemist, Liverpool Playhouse, review One of the richest satirical scenes in The Alchemist (1610) - indeed one of the most memorable scenes in Jacobean drama - arises when Sir Epicure Mammon, a knight in thrall to the bogus promises of limitless wealth and health dangled before him by those supreme cozeners Subtle and his sidekick Face, rhapsodises about what he'll do when he finally gets the elixir, aka "the philosopher's stone." "My meat shall all come in Indian shells," he says, "dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded with emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies." On he goes, losing himself in the reverie, loading up, preposterously, the intricate stipulations until he has turned airy nothing into something - to his mind - entirely tangible. It's an aria of greed played to perfection by Simon Coates in Robert Icke's revival at Liverpool Playhouse - the actor rigged out in a blazered, Woosterish fashion, unable to pronounce his "r"s, glazed eyes on the entirely elusive prize. Without any crude finger-pointing in the audience's direction, he makes you shift uncomfortably in your seat. Anyone who has bought a Lottery ticket and started planning a millionaire's lifestyle is a descendant of Jonson's deluded fool - indeed our bankrupted age is the net result of a something-for-nothing culture. Coates's winning turn - ably assisted by Kevin Harvey as his sceptical servant Surly - is almost worth the price of admission alone. I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Icke's production overall. His disarming, stripped-back approach situates the action within the skeletal framework of a basement flat largely comprised of free-standing wooden doors - part rehearsal-room, part film-set, very farce-friendly. In intellectual terms, it serves well - and points up the connection between gulling and acting. Yet the less-is-more design short-changes us of visual excitement, and the capricious modern aesthetic - Surly disguises himself as an Arab sheikh, for instance - robs the evening of the consistency needed to build momentum. Even though Ian Bartholomew puts in sterling work as a Peter Sellerish, shape-shifting Subtle - one scene a faux-blind Indian guru, the next an American-accented New Age healer - neither he nor Nicolas Tennant as Face attain the right temperature of blazing comic invention, cooled in a way by the cerebral directorial conceit. Icke is clearly fizzing with ideas, but too often his hand turns the sublime gold of Jonson's classic into the base metal of decent if effortful entertainment.