Some 25 members, making up more than a quarter of seats in the delightfully intimate New End Theatre in Hampstead, attended a performance of Phallacy, the most recent play by Carl Djerassi, novelist, playwright and professor of chemistry emeritus at Stanford University. Theatregoers familiar with Professor Djerassi's work were treated to the latest instalment of his science-in-fiction approach to illustrating the human side of science and the personal conflicts faced by scientists. The play about a Roman bronze of a naked young man being possibly 'only' a renaissance cast spanned some 2,000 years of history and science, with six cast members representing members of the Spanish royal household in the 16th century as well as art historians and chemists in the recent past. More specifically, the play interposed the quirks and idiosyncrasies of art historians and scientists when examining the age of an art object from their widely different perspectives: aesthetic and art historical connoisseurship versus cold material analysis. It also touched upon certain character faults well known not only to art scholars and scientists: falling in love with a favourite hypothesis and defending it against all corners and new evidence. The play was both educational, provocative, though-provoking and amusing.
Ole Rummel
Event review contributed by Event Committee.