Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company offers a heady cocktail of desire and depravity in its forthcoming production THE CHANGELING, the fruit of a new partnership with the renowned English Touring Theatre. Careering from bed chamber to lunatic asylum, the dark Jacobean masterpiece by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley revolves around a young woman who will stop at nothing to get her way once her passion has been ignited. Directed by Stephen Unwin as part of his final season as Director at ETT, THE CHANGELING runs at Nottingham Playhouse from Friday 28 September to Saturday 13 October 2007 before embarking on a seven-date UK tour.
Beatrice-Joanna wants to marry Alsemero, but her father has another husband in mind. Meanwhile her servant, the hideously deformed De Flores, would do anything to have her. When she asks him to dispose of her unwanted bridegroom, de Flores obliges. She tries to pay him in gold, but the obsessed servant has another reward in mind: the beautiful Beatrice-Joanna herself. At first repulsed, she soon finds herself in the throes of desire and their torrid alliance propels them on a depraved journey of lust, lunacy and murder.
THE CHANGELING is one of the most celebrated works of English theatre, fast-paced and full-blooded. First performed as early as 1622, the play takes its title from the sub-plot in which a servant, Antonio, disguises himself as a lunatic in a bid to infiltrate a madhouse and seduce the keeper’s wife. This makes the play funny; the main plot of Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores makes it ferocious. Beauty and the Beast they may be, but this is no fairy tale and their deadly bargain propels a sensational storyline full of violent incident. Yet the play’s intrigue is also psychological, particularly in its portrait of a young woman driven to dangerous lengths by her sexuality. For Director Stephen Unwin, this unusual depth of characterisation makes THE CHANGELING the greatest tragedy in English after Shakespeare.
Stephen Unwin is among the UK’s most experienced theatre directors, best known for his acclaimed productions of classic plays. His many credits include Hedda Gabler (Donmar Warehouse), King Lear with Timothy West (Old Vic), and Hamlet with Alan Cumming (Donmar Warehouse) and Ed Stoppard (West End).
Stephen founded ETT in 1993 and has made it into one of Britain’s leading touring companies. As well as the classics, ETT has been successful with several world premieres, including Hushabye Mountain by Jonathan Harvey, The York Realist by Peter Gill, Honeymoon Suite by Richard Bean and Someone Else’s Shoes by Drew Pautz.
The cast of THE CHANGELING brings together a number of experienced stage actors including Ken Bones, David Cardy, Terrence Hardiman, Adrian Schiller and Ian Mercer with Daon Broni, Gabriel Fleary, Samantha Lawson, Geoffrey Lumb, Marianne Oldham, Gideon Turner, and newcomer Anna Koval as Beatrice-Joanna.
Designer Paul Wills has created a dark and brooding twin-level set for THE CHANGELING, taking his cue from the asylum scenes to suggest an ancient, crumbling institutional building with a patina of grime and decay, full of nooks and crannies in which eavesdroppers, lovers and assassins might lurk unseen. Mark Bouman matches the set design with costumes in loosely seventeenth-century styles, but with contemporary touches cunningly incorporated for the observant. Lighting is by Ben Ormerod and the composer is Olly Fox, with sound design by Mike Furness.
Following its run at Nottingham Playhouse, THE CHANGELING tours to Cambridge Arts Theatre (Tues 16 to Sat 20 Oct), Malvern Theatres (Tues 23 to Sat 27 Oct), Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre (Tues 30 Oct to Sat 3 Nov), Liverpool Playhouse (Tues 6 to Sat 10 Nov), the Theatre Royal, Brighton (Tues 13 to Sat 17 Nov), the Hall for Cornwall, Truro (Tues 20 to Sat 24 Nov) and The Lowry, Salford (Tues 27 Nov to Sat 1 Dec).
