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INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN UNWIN
Director
You’ve called The Changeling the greatest tragedy in English outside of Shakespeare, why?
What this play has is a level of psychological realism, amazing realism that nobody else got. It hasn’t quite got
the great grand genius of a King Lear, but it goes right inside these human beings. I think it’s more like Ibsen
than Shakespeare because it is so psychologically intricate. It hasn’t got the great rolling language of
Shakespeare or of Webster or Marlowe. It’s much tougher than that … it’s much quicker. And it has this
amazing feeling of interiority, of the inner life of these people.
There are only three female characters in the play, can you tell us about them?
And all three of them are superbly drawn. One of the amazing things is that their sexuality is so upfront … and
that the writer seems to be so intrigued by that … but not in a simplistic, moralist way I don’t think. I suppose
you could say that Beatrice-Joanna’s sexuality leads her to do terrible things … but I think it’s more that he’s
saying; this is the truth, this is real, this is passionate, and complicated things happen. But you see the
realism of Diaphanta having sex with Alsemero and staying longer than she should, it’s an astounding bit of
realistic writing … Shakepeare would never get anywhere near that … because it’s kind of, well … there’s
pleasure in that, she’s enjoying it, and that kind of stuff puts it into a modernity of understanding and
psychology.
Are we getting a slice of contemporary politics in the play too, an attitude to the monarchy for instance?
I think there are some politics about the aristocracy. It’s a huge simplification but it looks like Middleton was
a sympathiser of the parliamentary cause in the years leading up to the Civil War, which was more of a middle
class group, and it seems the aristocracy, the Spanish, are shown to be worryingly corrupt, and if there are
any virtues and values around then they are more likely to be in the middle class, or even in the working
class. Deflores is a fallen aristocrat, it’s important to remember that. I think what we have here is a sceptical
writer who sees the world in realistic terms.
How do the two plots express this and link together?
Stephen Unwin
directs Gideon Turner
as ALSEMERO and
Anna Koval as
BEATRICE-JOANNA
in rehearsal (photo:
Stephen Vaughan)
Well they are kind of thematically linked. The main plot is about what would you do for love? Answer: you get
a man killed. Then the sub-plot is: what would you do for love? Answer: I’ll disguise myself as a madman. Both
are ruled by passion … and both lead to evil and foolish things. One of the really hard things to do with this
play is to show why the mad scenes are there, but I think if you realise that love is a madness that leads
people to do all sorts of strange things, you question: who really is mad? One of things we’ve tried to do with
the set is to merge these two worlds by putting them in this great Victorian madhouse, this asylum.
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