"Sensation slides into silliness in 'The Changeling'...The convoluted story grows more lurid and strained as the play hurtles toward its predictably bloody conclusion, but with a fine cast bringing sufficient heat to the panting plotlines, the Red Bull Theater and its artistic director, Jesse Berger, once again win admiration for presenting a rarely seen drama from the Jacobean era with highly caffeinated verve."
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"The play takes some very strange turns indeed and Berger directs it with intelligent sincerity...Despite committed zaniness from the cast the humor of these scenes is hard to render, and the back-and-forth between plots gets tiring. The elegance and clarity of this 'Changeling' are laudable, but a stronger sense of the grotesque might make it more attractive to verse-averse audiences."
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"Jesse Berger’s inconsistent staging for Red Bull Theater revival leads to its own varied responses. The main storyline about covetous Beatrice-Joanna and her sicko sexual and lethal alliance with her dad’s disfigured servant De Flores works okay. But a subplot about men in disguise to have sex with a doctor’s wife clunks. So much unevenness is enough to make you mope."
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"'The Changeling' is not as strong as other recent Red Bull productions. The cast, though capable and hardworking, isn’t quite able to bring credibility to the play. Even so, Berger’s production has a rough vitality, not to mention plenty of heightened language, blood and cleavage."
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"Red Bull's production tries to embrace the tonal inconsistencies. It hits the right notes of bleak humor and bloodlust, though it has problems connecting two wildly different story lines...Separately, the two narratives are very nicely performed...Berger has a hard time making them gel as one, and throughout the production, it feels as if we're watching two separate works being performed alternately."
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"'The Changeling' is a prime example of the genre. At its best, Jesse Berger's production is a glittering black comedy, unleashing alternative waves of shock and laughter, but not everyone is up to the task at hand, especially given some of the curveballs thrown their way by the authors...If you have any interest in the Jacobeans, 'The Changeling' is a must, if only because it might not come around for another couple of decades."
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"The version of the script used here contributes to this feeling of leanness, as does Berger's overall thematic approach, which, per his usual, sometimes sheds more light on the shadowy sections than is perhaps ideal...Berger and his company leave us a bit adrift and that failure to overcome the play's inherent challenges mean that the evening as a whole doesn't satisfy."
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"There's a lack of subtlety to the play's unambiguous moralizing and a strange off-kilter feeling to the weaving together of separate dramatic and comedic plot lines that render it somewhat inert in its latest production. Despite the employment of an ensemble cast as capable as it is large and richly atmospheric spatial and sound design, Red Bull's 'Changeling' never quite builds the salacious, seldom-performed work to the level of dynamism for which its productions are known."
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