The Changeling

The Changeling, as befits its name, is a rather odd creature. It's a spirited if not always successful attempt to blend film, live music and puppetry with more traditional theatre. Some styles complement one another more successfully than others.

The play also goes to great lengths to develop a complex and reasonably involving plot—it's about "eternal creatures, who only adopt human form for a short time", in London in the year 2020—only to let it slip from relevance. Given that the whole performance lasts about 40 minutes, this is a fairly rapid shift in emphasis.

The cast also seem unsure about their target audience. Many, but by no means all, of the lines are delivered in a somewhat flamboyantly over-enunciated style, complete with grimaces, that suggest it may be aimed at children. But much of the humour seems to leave younger audience members cold, leaving the play with an uncomfortably disjointed atmosphere.

That's not to say there aren't some nice touches. The script is often poetic, especially in the touching final scene, and contains one excellent idea: an unusual disease that blends life and death in a very elegant way. Unfortunately, this is balanced by some weak moments, including a particularly unimaginative dream sequence. Dodgy accents and worse puns abound.

The Changeling has some strong elements to its performance, especially when mixing various styles to create a special, if elusive, theatrical flavour. But it never quite functions as a whole, and is just too flawed to recommend.