The Changeling - Professional
'Middleton and Rowley as Bizet: the Carmen music that accompanied the deaths of De Flores and Beatrice merely made explicit the interpretation dramatised throughout. In place of the usual focus on her descent into sin, we watched a Don Juan De Flores mesmerised by his adoration of a hot-blooded and manipulative woman and drawn in far beyond his depth. And Middleton and Rowley as film noir: though the 1930s dress may have been dictated by economy (the company was doing a Lorca play in rep with the The Changeling), it was used to create an atmosphere of decay and doom suggesting the darker sides of Casablanca and similar films, with fascist uniforms and of honour failing to dignify men who were clearly thugs. The updating didn't all work (playing De Flores as a black chauffeur was too easy a symbol), but the overall impression of inevitability and of characters who half-accepted their doom from the start was appropriate and powerful.'
Gerald M. Berkowitz, RORD 29 (1986-1987), 65-6