The Changeling

Though it now hosts north of 20 productions a year, it’s rare to come across an actual stinker at Southwark Playhouse. Bad timing, then, for this muddled take on Middleton and Rowley’s tragedy, which arrives hot on the heels of the Playhouse’s deserved scooping of this year’s Peter Brook Empty Space award.

Blame must fall on director Michael Oakley for his bizarre conceit of having all asides play out as pre-recorded voiceovers and the decision to slice the text down to 90 minutes.

The voiceovers are simply a distracting gimmick. But in hacking out both the asylum subplot and space for the main story to breathe, Oakley has reduced ‘The Changeling’ to a set of visual crib notes, the story zipping by with reasonable clarity but little plausibility as Fiona Hampton’s Beatrice-Joanna falls murderously in and out of love with a string of men in a matter of minutes, for reasons that are difficult to grasp.

David Caves impresses as buff, sinister manipulator De Flores and the rest of the cast are generally competent, but this ‘Changeling’ is all momentum and no mass.