Philly Fringe 2017: Chris Davis and Mary Tuomanen present 'Alchemist'

They perform Alchemist in One Shot Coffee’s comfortable, upstairs, book-lined sitting room. The audience, about 25 people, sit on sofas and chairs around a playing area the size of a typical living room, where two matching chairs face each other. No theater lighting is needed, just a few lamps and the afternoon sun. Davis or Tuomanen occasionally dash up some nearby stairs, but remain in the conversation.

Travels in the U.S. and abroad

The inevitable preshow talk blends into the scripted play so neatly that one barely realizes the show has started. The pair outline their 19-year friendship in key moments called “artifacts,” such as their first Gchat in 2005, when the technology was new. They mime typing on keyboards abstractly with hands held out like bunny paws.

Memories of a road trip unspool, with music provided through a laptop tucked under a chair. We learn about “the cellphone in a cornfield,” a metaphor, though Davis confesses that “metaphors really stress me out.” Tuomanen recalls a Rhode Island blizzard, a day when “snow ha[d] abolished all order.” Many moments are captured in movement as well as words.

Both performers fascinate. “If you undress Paris,” says Tuomanen, “you discover that what’s under the pretty is more pretty.” While she was in France studying mime, Davis lived in Mexico, teaching English and smoking pot. “My life is not shitty,” he reports to her. “It’s Mexican.” Distance threatens their friendship, but they keep connecting through the years. “We’re considered talented by some people,” Davis says, both trying to talk himself into something and trying to encourage Tuomanen.

Am I that stupid lucky?

Today, Tuomanen and Davis are well-established, innovative Philadelphia theater artists. They eventually reunite here, as Alchemist shows, but don’t dwell on recent years much, except to wonder at their good fortune that after nearly two decades and such long stretches apart, they’re still friends and now, right now in front of us, sharing a stage for the first time. That’s their “stupid lucky” — and ours, for witnessing their inventively told, intimately shared transformation tale.