The Changeling

by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 4 February 2015

The wonderful indoor playhouse associated with Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside continues its series of Jacobean plays with the tragedy of Beatrice-Joanna as she finds that her attempts to secure her passion for Anselmero trap her in a spiral of moral degradation.

As usual the intimate candle-lit space is used to stunning effect. In fact the play opens in darkness with the major characters appearing and carrying a candle each with a reflector that shines the light only onto a part of their faces, so that eyes, mouths and noses seem to be floating past each other, the gazes snared by the sudden proximity of another's visage. This is a great introduction to a play in which the sight of another person can inflame passions of attraction and revulsion, but also in which many people are fundamentally unknowable or not what they seem.

Hattie Morahan plays Beatrice-Joanna, the wilful, wealthy fulcrum of the major plot. What begins as a courtly flirtation which could, in other circumstances, lead to an enriching love, soon degenerates into a sordid series of strategems, in which each crime leads to the 'necessity' of the next - not unlike the developments in 'Macbeth'. In this she is aided by the gentleman servant of the household, the disfigured DeFlores (Trystan Gravelle); but whether she is corrupted by him, is a moot point as she seems unaware of her degeneracy - or at any rate she seems convinced that saving appearances would exonerate her. But, in the event, appearances are not saved. Morahan and Gravelle are compelling presences as the dynamics of their characters' interactions shift and flicker throughout the play. One is never sure whether her initial revulsion has tipped into attraction, or whether it has become an appalled fascination, an ambivalence which enriches the production. His passion for her is constant, but always bound up with an eye for the main chance - ghosts appear to him but do not impel any remorse.

There is a secondary plot, often cut but here given full rein, in which a young wife is confined in her elderly husband's hospital for fools and madmen, with the idea that she will be safe there from unwelcome attentions. Far from it: two young men have disguised themselves as a fool and a madman to present their suits, while Lollio the steward (Pearce Quigley) is not above sexual blackmail either. He provides much of the comic relief by means of an assured sense of timing and a willingness to risk unusual pauses and speech patterns (also much in evidence in an extraordinary performance as Bottom in the Globe's recent 'Midsummer Night's Dream'). The setting is not at all congenial to modern sensibilities but it echoes the tramelling of Beatrice-Joanna in her more comfortable surroundings, and underscores the importance of dissembling in the whole economy of the play. 

The moral turpitude is dire, and Beatrice-Joanna and DeFlores are blood-soaked corpses by the end, but any sense of cathartic relief is severely tempered by the impression that none of the survivors is particularly admirable either - a father ready to accept any prospective son-in-law who comes along, a husband who is revolted by what his wife has done, but who initially discussed (to say the least) the idea of removing his rival, young blades fended off their attempt to seduce a young wife, but not apparently remorseful. Not a pretty picture - but an excellent production.