Crescent Theatre Blog

 

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

‘…the progress of Desire from its first conception is of this kind…it seeks hiding places and keeps itself secret…until throwing off all restraints of shame and fear…it either assumes the mask of some virtue, or sets infamy itself at defiance.’ (Francis Bacon, De Dignitate et Augentis Scientarium, 1623)

The Changeling (8th – 15th May, Crescent Studio) is a play for anyone who, watching the news last year, looked at Amanda Knox being led away in handcuffs and wondered how pretty 22 year old exchange student from Seattle, USA ended up being convicted of the murder and sexual assault of another young woman.

We’ll probably never know exactly what passed between Knox, her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Meredith Kercher. The facts are that Kercher was found dead; she had suffered a crushed windpipe, her throat had been slashed, she had 43 bruises, scratches and knife wounds on her body and she had been sexually assaulted. Amanda Knox, a previously unremarkable, middle-class young woman, is now serving a 26 year sentence in an Italian prison. Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted of murder and sexual assault and jailed for 25 years.

Middleton and Rowley’s play deals with what happens when the animal instincts that lie somewhere within us all are unleashed. It’s a dark, violent and bloody Jacobean tragedy with plenty to say to a modern audience about the fragile line between passion and madness.

The main character, Beatrice, lets her passion for a man she can’t have override her reason. She enters into a sinister pact with a Deflores, a servant who has secretly lusted after her for years. When Deflores changes the terms of their agreement after murder has been done, she agrees to quench his desire for her, rather than risk revealing what they have done. More deceit becomes the only way to cover up their crimes as they spiral into depravity and despair. Beatrice is the ‘changeling’ of the title; changing almost beyond recognition from the beautiful, ordinary young noblewoman at the start of the play.

Jacobeans believed that humans were set apart from animals and plants by their possession of a ‘rational soul’. It was the rational soul that ruled over the animal in Man, elevating people above beasts. If Man’s appetites refused to be controlled by the rational soul, they believed that the animal in Man became dominant, resulting in madness. Madness in Jacobean plays is not only seen as a state of sin, but is frequently represented by the transformation of humans to the state of animals. It is almost as though the animal in man resents being tethered by reason and rationality, so much so that when let loose, it wilfully wreaks havoc.

Francis Bacon, a prominent Jacobean thinker, used the image of ‘the tiger in the chariot’ to describe this phenomenon; ‘Tigers likewise are kept in the stables of the passions, and at times yoked to their chariot; for when passion ceases to go on foot and comes to ride in its chariot, as in celebration of its victory and triumph over reason, then is it cruel, savage, and pitiless towards all that withstand or oppose it.’ (De Dignitate et Augentis Scientarium, 1623).

The Changeling is a play about what happens if we let our basest desires ride roughshod over our reason and humanity. A glance at some of the more salacious stories in the news, nearly 400 years after the play was first performed, suggests that the plot is as relevant today as it was in Jacobean times.