Three Cheers for The Changeling

Monday, 13 February 2012

The Changeling is the latest play directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, Genesis Fellow and Deputy Artistic Director of the Young Vic, to be met with high praise from the critics. A gripping and darkly comic tale of how love and sex drive us mad, this new production of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s masterpiece creates a thrilling modern interpretation of the Jacobean tragedy. The Changeling runs at the Young Vic until 25 February.

What the critics said:
“Sex and drugs are always a vital part of this Jacobean tragedy, but it’s the director Joe Hill-Gibbins who gives it its rock’n’roll […] this is a faithful revival of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s darkly funny play as well as a fresh one.”
Dominic Maxwell ★★★★ The Times

I was won over by a production that suggests madness is the play’s real theme. […] Everything in Hill-Gibbins’s modern-dress revival exists at a tangent to normality. […] It captures perfectly the play’s atmosphere of mad excess.

Michael Billington ★★★★ The Guardian

“Joe Hill-Gibbins’s creepy, sexy, and at times downright bonkers modern-dress production”.
Charles Spencer ★★★★ The Daily Telegraph

“Joe Hill-Gibbins’s bold, blackly antic account of The Changeling […] hurls the two plots across each other’s paths in brilliantly telling ways and without any change of scenery. […] Superbly ratchets up the tension”
Paul Taylor ★★★★ The Independent

“[The Changeling] expertly walks the line between horror and ridicule […] the excitable, anarchic drive to this production releases the disturbing force of this dark play”
Sarah Hemming ★★★★ Financial Times

“The play’s iconic moments are all beautifully realised.”
Robert Shore ★★★★ Metro