The Changeling

The Red Bull Theater, where The Changeling is performed, specializes in the plays of Shakespeare and other authors of the Jacobean period of English literature (1558-1625). This is their twelfth season and I am already looking forward to the next productions. I don’t remember the last time when heavy, ornate Elizabethan English was so light on the ears and it allowed me to dive to the core of the story.

This is a story of love and madness, the main heroine of which, Beatrice-Joanna, portrayed by beautiful Sarah Topham, falls in love with Alsemero (Christian Coulson) days before the wedding with her fiancé Alonzo (John Skelley). She asks her father if the wedding can be delayed and pays De Flores (Manoel Felciano), her father’s servant, to kill Alonzo. De Flores is madly in love with Joanna and is ready to do anything for her; even commit a crime. Joanna despises him and every time she sees his face covered in burns she fills with anger and shows us another side of her nature – a neurotic, manipulative madwoman which she becomes more and more as the play progresses.

De Flores repels Joanna so much that she doesn’t want to take her own glove after she dropped it on the ground and the servant picked it up. She furiously tears off the second glove, tosses it to him and storms out. De Flores is left alone with an object from his love. He pulls one glove on his right hand and sniffs the other one with desire. This scene describes perfectly strong affections that one has for another. And even though these affections have different signs of polarity, the essence of these passions is the same, which will bring them together and kill them tragically. 

There is a second plot line to this play, which takes place in a madhouse. It has a comedic tone to it, which balances out the drama in the castle of Joanna’s father, Vermandero. Isabella (Michelle Beck), the wife of doctor Albius, is desired by two young men – Antonio (Bill Army) and Pedro (Philippe Bowgen) who pretend to be madmen in order to get closer to her. Isabella is flirty and giggly with her admirers but she never commits adultery while Joanna sinks deeper and deeper in sin.

To my deepest disappointment Michelle Beck didn’t bring up the character of Isabella to the fullest. She seemed slow and flat yet there is so much potential in this playful and foxy part. Her stage partners, Christopher McCann playing doctor Alibius and Andrew Weems playing Lollio, employee of the doctor, were more successful as comedic elements. Their costumes and manner of speaking to each other aided the comedy, especially when facing the audience instead of each other. The madhouse part of the ensemble seemed uneven and poorly fitted, as if they belonged to casts of different productions but were stitched together by a skillful director.

The minimalistic, entirely black set was beautiful. Three windows with reflecting mirror surfaces in the far wall were transformed into the windows of cells that housed the fools in the madhouse. The simple scenic design by Marion Williams was utilized to it’s fullest and gave actors the freedom to form a sophisticated layout of different places and keep their performance dynamic.

Costumes by Beth Goldenberg were a mixture of modernity and 17^th century nostalgia. Some of them were more memorable than others: the costume of the doctor in which he looked like one of his fools, the animalistic masks of fools, and finally Joanna’s gloves from the scene with De Flores described previously. The gloves were made of lace on the outside and leather on the palm, mirroring Joanna’s double-sided nature. The elaborate and eclectic style of Goldenberg’s designs gave the period play a modern flavor and played well against the black canvas of the stage. The costumes were mostly monochromatic that, combined with the blackness of the set, made the appearance of blood in murder scenes more dramatic. There was a scary realism in these abundant streams of blood.

The Changeling is a great play by itself and the Red Bull Theater Company succeeded in bringing it to the modern viewer. It truly felt like the text itself was the center jewel in the beautiful crown of this production.