THE CHANGELING at Southwark Playhouse

★★★½

“a slick, stylish, and refreshing take on a Renaissance play”

Tinny Italian pop music, a mini-fridge full of champagne, and, in the centre of the stage, a long wooden boardroom table surrounded by high-backed chairs. ‘The Changeling’, Middleton and Rowley’s 17th-century play, adapted and directed by Ricky Dukes, takes place entirely in this boardroom (designed by Sorcha Corcoran), with the cast in mid-century dress (excellently created by Alice Neale). The play follows Beatrice-Joanna (Colette O’Rourke), who, betrothed to a man she does not love, seeks to murder her fiancée. When Beatrice enlists the help of her servant De Flores (Jamie O’Neill), who is as obsessed with her as she is disgusted by him, both are drawn into a complex current of desire and murder.

Originally featuring a parallel plot set in a madhouse, this production bravely subsumes the comedic subplot into the tragic main plot but retains a semblance of the madhouse setting for the second act. While it scraps their storyline, the production also retains the madhouse inmates, here recast as The Patients, the house band who interrupt the tragic proceedings to croon wedding-singer style, bounce mega-balloons around the audience, and bathe the stage in disco lighting.

The production is a slick, stylish, and refreshing take on a Renaissance play. The staging is often particularly impressive, and manages to do a lot with very little, thanks in large part to Stuart Glover’s stunning and, at times, very complex lighting design. Even though the boardroom table never moves, we get everything from catacombs to fire. One particularly impressive scene sees De Flores and Alonzo (Alex Bird) descending into the castle vaults, lit cleverly by headlamps worn by the rest of the cast to create the illusion of tunnels.

The influence of Daniel Fish’s dark staging of ‘Oklahoma!’ is evident, with Jamie O’Neill, who is excellent, bringing a wounded and vulnerable desperation to De Flores’ sinister perversity, which very nearly gleans our sympathy. Refusing to cast De Flores as purely revolting and imagining him instead as someone who Beatrice might mutually desire works very well.

“stylish and unflaggingly entertaining”

It would be possible for the cast to lean even further into this fruitful dynamic, were they given a more intimate space. Instead, the interruptions of The Madhouse, though occasionally well-placed, are frequently distracting. All eleven cast members are on-stage almost constantly, navigating around the boardroom table which, while stylish looking, never feels necessary and is instead mostly a hindrance. Taking up almost all available space, it means that most scenes take place with actors entirely separated by a large piece of wood. This dampens some of the sinister sensuality and is a shame in a play that is essentially about desiring bodies.

The best parts of this play come, instead, when the production leans into sparser staging, and leverages the uncanniness of the space. One moment, where De Flores and Beatrice kneel together on the table in the centre of the chaos created, is particularly powerful.

Frequently, however, the play expends too much energy in the wrong places, and, as it reaches its tragic climax, becomes almost claustrophobic. By the end, the audience must contend not only with the table, but also with eleven cast members, fake blood, confetti, and two types of balloon.

Paradoxically, less to do would give the excellent cast more to work with. However, despite the lack of breathing room, this is a stylish and unflaggingly entertaining production. The ‘excessive’ aspects also undoubtedly most engage the audience, and Lazarus is, after all, a company designed to do exactly this.

THE CHANGELING at Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed on 10th October 2023

by Anna Studsgarth

Photography by Charles Flint

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse:

Ride | ★★★ | July 2023

How To Succeed In Business … | ★★★★★ | May 2023

Strike! | ★★★★★ | April 2023

The Tragedy Of Macbeth | ★★★★ | March 2023

Smoke | ★★ | February 2023

The Walworth Farce | ★★★ | February 2023

Hamlet | ★★★ | January 2023

Who’s Holiday! | ★★★ | December 2022

Doctor Faustus | ★★★★★ | September 2022

The Prince | ★★★ | September 2022

Tasting Notes | ★★ | July 2022

Evelyn | ★★★ | June 2022

The Changeling

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★★

“Aside from a couple of well-intentioned but clunky party scenes, there was no variation in pace from one scene to the next”

Gavin McAlinden’s production of Anthony & Cleopatra at Theatro Technis is the showcase production for the students at his weekly acting workshop, Acting Gymnasium, and this is very obviously a mixed ability student production. Michael Claff (Anthony) is clearly a regular, having frequently taken the lead in other productions, and makes a decent fist of it, but the majority of the other cast members struggled vocally, with diction and clarity, which meant that not only was the poetry lost, but frequently the narrative too. Although Gabriel Puscas (Enobarbus) moved with a certain charismatic ease, for instance, far too many of his lines were rushed, mumbled and impossible to distinguish. Too often, the language was sacrificed in moments of high emotion. This was problematic across the board, and particularly marred Hannah Luna’s performance as Cleopatra. This most tempestuous of Shakespeare’s heroines speaks some of her most extraordinary lines in rage and in grief, and we simply couldn’t make them out. In addition, the decision to dress her in a succession of differently coloured corsets did nothing to lend this performance the strength and sensuality it lacked. Nowhere in this production was there the sense of the enormous power at stake in this relationship, nor was it there in Caesar’s icy machinations.

There were some welcome moments of clarity provided by some of the actors in smaller roles – credit here to Emma Wilkinson Wright (Charmian), Anna Walden (Agrippa) and Ventidius (Brian Easty) – and the sound design (including James Jones’ original music) though occasionally heavy-handed, was pleasingly atmospheric throughout, but overall this was a slow evening, running half an hour over its advertised running time. Aside from a couple of well-intentioned but clunky party scenes, there was no variation in pace from one scene to the next, and the transitions were badly managed throughout, with far too much bare stage on show. The two courts were not sufficiently defined against one another, and the grandeur of Anthony and Cleopatra’s passion was nowhere to be found.

It left this reviewer with big unanswered questions, the dominant one being, ‘why tell this story now?’ Theatre is a scarce commodity at the moment, and every production needs to have something to say. What did the director want to say? What did he want his audience to find? As we stepped out into the night, we remained unenlightened.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

THE CHANGELING at Southwark Playhouse

★★★½

“a slick, stylish, and refreshing take on a Renaissance play”

“stylish and unflaggingly entertaining”

THE CHANGELING at Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed on 10th October 2023

by Anna Studsgarth

Photography by Charles Flint

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse:

The Changeling

The Changeling

Theatro Technis

Reviewed – 29th September 2020

★★

“Aside from a couple of well-intentioned but clunky party scenes, there was no variation in pace from one scene to the next”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Antony and Cleopatra

Theatro Technis until 4th October

Previously reviewed by Rebecca