The Changeling

Synopsis

The Changeling is set in a world of lords and fools where the line between the two is fine. The beautiful Beatrice, driven by her secret lust, enlists the help of her father's servant. But 'honest' Deflores, ugly as sin, drives a harder bargain than she expected. As it changes from bleak tragedy to black farce, 'The Changeling' tells a tale of sex, lies and animal passions. Mayhem is commonplace.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 27 November 2012

There have been several exceptional productions at the Young Vic this year – After Miss Julie, Wild Swans, Three Sisters – but the first of them, Joe Hill-Gibbins’s revival of The Changeling by Middleton and Rowley in the small Maria studio, was the best of all.

Now re-cast and re-mounted in the main body of the theatre, it does not quite pack the same punch, nor is there as much red jelly and blood, as before. Ultz’s re-design has lost the intensity of the audience sitting, as in a corrida, behind plywood fencing.

But we are still assembled in austere, court-room fashion to witness parallel plots of deceit and possession that are gloriously entwined at the wedding feast, a pageant of fools and madmen driven to embrace all guilty parties in a quagmire of lust and longing.

There was something really alarming about Jessica Raine’s demure exterior as Beatrice-Joanna as her passion welled up in...

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