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

Click here to read all our latest reviews

★★

“a floundering production that simply doesn’t know what it is”

Tom Brown’s School Days is a semi-autobiographical novel by Thomas Hughes, first published in 1857. This production is the latest in a long line of adaptations, and director Phil Wilmott has chosen to set it in WWII, presumably to shoehorn it into the Essential Classics season at the Union, which this year takes this war as its theme. The idea of the season, to quote the programme notes, is to present work ‘in which great writers of the past reflect on the issues we face today’. This seems a stretch for this particular piece. For starters, Hughes can in no way be described as a great writer, and secondly, the script that has been put together by the company (there is no accredited playwright) is thin and uninspiring; devoid of any intellectual or emotional gravitas. At its best it is well-worn pastiche, and at its worst a paeon to all that is wrong with British public school culture.

The plot (such as it is) is a simple one. A new boy – Tom Brown – joins Rugby School at a time when many of the masters are absent, serving in the war, and the old Head has come back from retirement. This Head – Dr. Arnold – wants to eradicate bullying in the school and produce boys who are fit to be the new generation of leaders of the country. Tom and his fellows face down the bullies, and many of them go on to serve in the same squadron, under their former Head Boy. Lest we forget, the programme notes helpfully remind us that these are the ‘upper class young men who’d go on to lead the armed forces to victory’. There is one woman in the play, the resourceful working class cook, who cheerfully helps our boys out when they use their fathers’ money to fund black market feasts for one another, and takes being called a ‘stupid woman’ by our hero on the chin. In Britain 2020, after the most divisive election there has been in decades, and one in which ‘the vast majority of the British people bewilderingly voted to continue to be governed by upper class millionaires’ (programme notes again), the uncritical way in which this story is presented leaves a deeply unpleasant taste in the mouth.

This is a floundering production that simply doesn’t know what it is. The staging – endless and bizarre use of direct address, and plenty of choreographed stage pictures – is pure musical theatre, but it isn’t a musical. And yet…. There are hymns of course, fitting the Rugby setting, but then there are two extraordinary and ill-judged bursts of song which tie in with neither plot nor period: a Jerry Lee Lewis style piano number, and a plaintive guitar solo. There are also jarring moments of melodramatic piano underscore throughout. Reuben Speed’s set looks good, and is well-designed for the space and Penn O’Gara’s period costumes also fit the bill. Unfortunately, the performances are uniformly flat and disconnected. Press Night stumbles aside, which are to be expected and are in no way problematic, this was a production in which not a single actor shone. In the rare high-stakes moments, there was simply no emotional connection in the performances. The words never took flight, and as such, the audience had no investment in the characters whatsoever. This was a thoroughly forgettable evening. Would that the stewardship of Boris and his chums could be similarly consigned to history’s wastepaper basket without consequence.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Mark Senior

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

Union Theatre

Reviewed – 7th January 2020

★★

“a floundering production that simply doesn’t know what it is”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Mark Senior

Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Union Theatre until 2nd February

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: