Theatre reviews: The Alchemist, Tron Theatre, Glasgow | An Inspector Calls, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

LONDON at the turn of the 17th century; the dawn of modern capitalism, and the sudden emergence of a whole class of nouveau riche types awash with cash, and ripe for exploitation by urban chancers and scam-merchants. So it was that in 1610, the great satirist Ben Jonson sat down to write The Alchemist; an immensely cheeky and preposterous city comedy in which two con-artists called Face and Subtle - one a servant left in temporary charge of a big empty townhouse, and the other with a gift for assuming the pseudo-scientific airs of an alchemist about to turn base metal into gold – pocket piles of cash from a band of foolish clients who range from a witless young aristocrat eager to meet the fairy queen, to a pair of money-grubbing priests from the local church.