Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Jackie Maxwell, former Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival, makes her Stratford directorial debut at the helm of the Jacobean thriller The Changeling. The production is now on stage at the Tom Patterson Theatre.
Written by two contemporaries of Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling centres on Beatrice-Joanna, who is in love with the young nobleman Alsemero, but is unwillingly betrothed to another man. To resolve her dilemma, she turns to a man she has always professed to loathe, her father’s servant, De Flores. She plans to reward him with gold; he, however, has a different form of payment in mind. The consequences prove fatal as Beatrice-Joanna struggles in a trap of her own making.
The extraordinary cast features Ben Carlson as De Flores and Mikaela Davies as Beatrice-Joanna, with Tim Campbell as Lollio and Cyrus Lane as Alsemero.
“This is not a drama from the past we can distance ourselves from,” says Ms Maxwell. “Lean, focused, endlessly surprising and full of mordant humour, The Changeling is a complex and disturbing exploration of sexual desire and power and the terrifyingly thin line between choice and lack of control.”
“I am thrilled to welcome Jackie to Stratford,” says Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino. “The Changeling is a piece she did expertly at the NAC in 1980 and she has revisited it here in a production of great passion and visceral impact. It’s a taut drama that takes you on a cleverly disorienting journey – dark, grimly comic and completely engrossing.”
The production’s creative team includes Set Designer Camellia Koo, Costume Designer Judith Bowden, Lighting Designer Bonnie Beecher, Composer and Sound Designer Debashis Sinha, Fight Director John Stead and Movement Director Valerie Moore.
The Changeling officially opens on Thursday, June 15, and runs until September 23.
Production support is generously provided by Max & Helen Jacobs.
Corporate sponsor for the 2017 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre is BMO Financial Group.
Support for the 2017 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre is generously provided by Richard Rooney & Laura Dinner.
The Changeling Forum highlights
The Forum is a series of events, such as exclusive showcases, guest speakers, special meals, music and family fun, that offer theatregoers a unique opportunity to delve deeper into the ideas and issues raised by the 2017 playbill. Themes related to The Changeling will be explored through several Forum events, including:
• Shakespeare and Company: The Playwright’s World
Sunday, July 30
Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino, theatre critic Robert Cushman, scholar Randall Martin and director Jeannette Lambermont-Morey discuss the social and theatrical conditions in which the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists operated, how the writers interacted, and why this was a Golden Age.
• Shakespeare and Company: Middleton and More
Wednesday, August 30
While The Changeling is one of the great Jacobean tragedies, Thomas Middleton was also a great writer of comedies, particularly the “city plays” depicting contemporary London in all its lustful, conniving, mercantile glory. Robert Cushman, with members of the company, examines Middleton’s tragic and comic genius – two sides of the same glittering coin.
• Shakespeare and Company: The White Devil
Sunday, September 17
Members of the Festival acting company read one of the greatest of Jacobean tragedies: John Webster’s mordant masterpiece The White Devil.
The Stratford Festival’s 2017 season runs until October 29, featuring Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Guys and Dolls, HMS Pinafore, Treasure Island, The School for Scandal, The Changeling, Bakkhai, Tartuffe, The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Komagata Maru Incident, The Virgin Trial and The Breathing Hole. For tickets and more information, visit stratfordfestival.ca or call 1.800.567.1600.
Photo: Mikaela Davies and Ben Carlson. ©2016 Lynda Churilla.
2017-05-26
Stratford: Middleton and Rowley's Jacobean tragedy "The Changeling" begins previews