DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Look at the content of any television provider today, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and you will see a plethora of material relating to the dark side of human nature - madness, violence, horror, lust and betrayal. The same is true of the Jacobean dramatists. The theatres needed content that would grip the public, and the writers provided it. After Elizabeth I, the world seemed to be in turmoil. There was an obsession with death, sex and violence, corruption was rife and god was far away. Some things never change.
The Changeling is a remarkably intense play. I have stripped out the somewhat extravagant sub-plot so to focus on the central story of Beatrice, who, thinking she can control the jack-in-the-box of sin that she deliberately lets loose in her world, moves inexorably from being a woman in her rightful place to being an outcast, a sinner, a foul adulteress and a murderer. She is the changeling, but she is not a victim. She is a strong female character who makes some fatally bad decisions that bring about her destruction. Though her outcome is bleak, she absolutely owns it.
Though it has feet in the 17th century, this play has a modernity about it that makes it a fascinating study of what happens when one embarks upon a road to perdition. As Beatrice says when she realises how things are going to go down: "Vengeance begins; murder, I see, is followed by more sins."
I hope you are thrilled and disturbed by our presentation of The Changeling.
Michael Hurst |