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The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. Dir. Steve Unwin. English Touring Theatre. November 2007

Written in 1621, The Changeling requires a modern audience to cast aside twenty-first century social and sexual politics. A pre-show talk by Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company’s Steve Unwin explains that, far from being distressed, Beatrice-Joanna would have been honoured to have her husband chosen for her by her father, and that her disobedience would have struck contemporary audiences as deeply shocking.

Days before her wedding to an unwanted suitor, the apparently indulged Beatrice-Joanna instead falls for Alsemero. An awkward situation, further complicated by her father’s devoted servant de Flores, who is obsessed with her. She repels de Flores until she decides to make him useful, asking him to kill her bridegroom and leave her free to marry Alsemero.

It has not occurred to her that she has made a deal with the devil. To her horror, he refuses money but claims her as his reward, switching her from privileged and headstrong young woman to hapless victim.

Not only a Jacobean revenge drama, The Changeling looks at woman’s roles of the time at three levels of society: the aristocrat Beatrice-Joanna, the young, beautiful wife of the lunatic asylum’s director, condemned to virtual imprisonment because she is desirable, and Beatrice-Joanna’s maidservant. The female characters are intelligent and powerful, and all three actresses give strong, impressive performances.

It is hard to understand how the despised de Flores ignites a passion in Beatrice-Joanna, unless this is created by the power he holds over her, and which we would recognize as Stockholm Syndrome. She is impressed by his quick thinking and effectiveness which turns her scorn to admiration. Shockingly avant-garde in its time, The Changeling is a play of extremes; passion, madness and murder, finely recreated and staged four hundred years after it was written, by The English Touring Theatre in a co-production with the Nottingham Playhouse Company.
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