1986artscambridge
'Middleton and Rowley as Sheridan: the production played a twelve-week tour of middle-sized civic theatres in repertoire with The School for Scandal; and though The Changeling was chosen first, the casting favoured Sheridan.
It was meant to be in the style of Goya, like the costumes: the men's elongated silhouettes were impressive, especially when lit from the front to cast giant shadows; Beatrice Joanna looked out from her dark red satins like a worm in the bud; and the dumb show was thunderously danced by the ensemble as a Carlos Saura flamenco. However, the cast played most of the scenes as light comedy [...]
[T]he central scenes had little power -- Beatrice was not especially obsessed with De Flores; and she failed [...] to grow into the deed's creature. Tom Georgeson's spindly De Flores, a household servant with long grey hair and an initially eccentric manner, was impressive: ashamed by his absurdity as an ex-gentleman and a hopeless lover, he seized his one opportunity and relished every consequence. The actor's hoarse low voice matched his text well.
The set was an off-white chamber with huge grey units which the cast moved for spying purposes or to show the mad-house as a high-security unit.
But lack of rehearsal (four weeks for two plays) meant that both plots became limper as they progressed. No links were made between Beatrice and Isabella, whose disguise-scene was rushed through nervously; the sub-plot ended vaguely with a brawl during the scene-change; and when Beatrice and Joanna died, the survivors stood woodenly by: the actors looked as bemused as the audience by the way [...] comedy turns out.'
Gerald M Berkovitz, RORD 29 (1986-1987), 65-6