The Changeling (1974)
by Thomas Middleton & William Rowley
Directed by Director's Name
Performances: 28th April – 4th May 1974, Theatre
Contents
Introduction
Text about the play
Cast
- Vermandero (Father to Beatrice) - Leslie Lidyard
- Tomajo de Piracquo (A noble lord) - Terry Barden
- Alonjo de Piracquo (His brother, suitor to Beatrice) - Joe Fitzgerald
- Alsemero (A nobleman, afterward married to Beatrice) - Laurence Staig
- Jasperino (his friend) - Ray Jones
- Albius (A jealous doctor) - Dennis Packham
- Lollio (His man) - Mike Mattey
- Pedro (Friend to Antonio) - Jonathan Taylor
- Antonio (The Changeling) - Robert Holden
- Franciscus (The counterfeit madman) - Brian Scoltock
- De Flores (Servant to Vermandero) - Colm O'Neill
- Beatrice-Joanna (Daughter to Vermandero) - Midge Adams
- Diaphanta (Her waiting woman) - Susan Cooksey
- Isabella (Wife to Alibus) - Kate Staig
- Mad people - Brenda Maughan, Christine Wilson, Delia Taitt, Diana Hawkesworth, John Boyle & George McGillivray
Crew
Not recorded in archive book
Reviews
After a shuddering outbust of horror from the wronged husband Alsemero (Ray Jones, his dissembling wife Beatrice (Midge Adams) comes forth, bleeding profusely from the throat, with her ill-favoured lover De Flores (Colm O'Neill) erect, defiant, like an angel of destruction.
Against a tableau of frozen grief in which the murdered Piracquo's brother participates equally with the counterfeit madmen Antonio and Franciscus, the guilty pair superbly play out the final act of their tradgedy.
If the rest of Jill Clark's production were on the same level of magnificence as this closing scene, its place would be assured at the pinicle of the South London Theatre Centre's achievements. As things stand we must still welcome it, with all its unevenness, as a fine and imaginative piece of theatre.
"The Changeling" concerns change on many levels, with corruption running like a dark thread through its plotting. Thomas Middleton was chiefly responsible for the main plot, William Rowley for the comic sub-plot in the madhouse, where the feigning madmen lay siege to the principal's wife, in a distorted mirror-image of the satanic liason betweeen De Flores and Beatrice-Joanna.
It is of course the latter which raised the play to the rank of one of the greates of all Jacobean dramas. Midge Adams perceptively grasps the terrible, ghastly innocence, almost dreamlike, in which she plunges to destruction and in which, steeped in blood, she can descant upon her honour.
Colm O'Neill, chillingly made up like a squat toad of a man, foul of visage and often lurking behind the action like a black shadow, is undoubtedly the best of S.L.T.C.'s actors to play such a role as the damned De Flores. Yet he sometimes uses his fine voice to much less than its full effect. He is jaunty when he should be full of menace ("Here comes the man who goes sceperless to bed ") and the murder of Piracquo nees a more grimmer measure in its execution.
The production features a finely, atmospheric dumb show and a chilling edge in the madmen's rehearsal. Dennis Packham's Alibius wants more control the palsied of old age, and it is left up to Mike Mattey's Lollio to supply the sardonic humour of the sub-plot. Kate Staog as Isabell, with a hairstyle to match that of Beatrice-Joanna, is teasingly cunning, and the fools and madmen have a certain baroque grandeur.
Of the rest, Ray Jones brings the highest distinction to Alsemero, proving himself an actor of explosive potential.
Donald Magewick, The Croydon Advertiser.
Gallery
Reminiscences and Anecdotes
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See Also
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References
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