Review: reach out, touch faith, and be exorcised by The Changelings
Written and performed by Charlotte Saluzisnky, directed by Zoë Hollyoak, live score by Micaela Ellis and Bonnie Stewart
Reviewed by Zoe Witenden
More than one fateful event led me to be the last of the audience to walk into the PACT theatre to be exorcised by The Changelings. As I hurried past a boxy red car and a drum set, synth and guitar to take the last two empty seats in the front row, ‘Personal Jesus’ by Depeche Mode shrouded us. My mum loves that song, and I thought of her face contorting as she sings it, arms wilding either side as she makes intense eye contact with whoever is brave enough to stare back.
I met my mum, and the other person responsible for my birth, one Tuesday night in the village for a drink, and they fed me a little story of the previous night they’d spent at this bar. My parents tell many a story, of the many a person they meet. This particular night, my mum was horrified to see three young people working their Friday night away. She approached in curiosity, and with her charming wiles quickly discovered that these three were preparing for their upcoming show. She then asked if writer-performer Charlotte Salusinszky, director Zoë Hollyoak and production designer Hailley Hunt knew her daughter Zoe’s friend Charlotte’s journal Kaleidoscope. My mum has taught me to lean into all things serendipitous – “everything happens for a reason”, she says, and repeats as ritual. So there I made it, to watch Charlotte’s curls bounce on stage, reminding me of my mother’s, as I wondered if she would have been telling her stories to an audience instead of to her daughter if I had never been born.
The Changelings, through Charlotte Salusinszky’s autobiographical lens, battles the statues of religion, queerness, and the ageing of woman with an indulgent humour, but holds them with enough fragility to keep them from cracking. From monologue to song, and back, the audience is shepherded through Charlotte’s life experiences beginning at the very first: the entrance into this world through her “weird mum”. We are fed stories of childhood magic, sexual awakenings, Christian rebirth, and the bond between mother and daughter with a bold, 80’s flamboyance. This flamboyance takes shape from the moment Charlotte and musicians Bonnie Stewart and Micaela Ellis grace us with their frilled presence, an homage to the generation of weird mums that beget us.
Just a few weeks before seeing The Changelings, as I anxiously approached my 27th birthday, I sent a text to my significant other: “Ageing is tragedy in motion”. As Susan Sontag would say in her essay ‘The Double Standard of Aging’, that I read the very next day, “One of the greatest tragedies of each woman’s life is simply getting older; it is certainly the longest tragedy. Aging is a movable doom”. And as Charlotte would say to the cackle of the audience: “I’m not Lindsay Lohan anymore!”
Why are we all so scared of becoming our mothers? This play/sermon/gig’s reverence of Freaky Friday produced a collective laugh for its first seeming frivolity, but its exploration of woman as mother, woman as daughter, woman as neither Lindsay Lohan nor Jamie Lee Curtis, is one of its most touching effects.
The Changelings constantly recentres, from Charlotte’s own experiences of the church, balancing queerness with a love of Jesus, and back to her weird mum. As someone with a self-proclaimed weird mum — “I know I’m weird”, I’ve often heard her say, sometimes in pride, sometimes in self-deprecation — I have seen how the world has seen her. A weird mum rejects the preconceived notion of woman as mother. “Women are not supposed to be ‘potent’”, writes Sontag, their ideal state to society being one of docility. The Changelings indicates a similar belief, referencing the ever changing representation of Mother Mary from hands raised high above in strength and power, to the caricature of the soft and nurturing mother with child in hands. The magic weird mums bestow upon us is either taboo or rejected, but to be more than just daughter or mother it is essential to embrace, and this is what The Changelings preaches.
To explore the idea of ageing as a woman is vulnerable, and bold, and unsexy. The latter may be what makes it so difficult. But Charlotte danced with the shadows of herself, the darkness in faith, sexuality, ageing, and a woman’s relationship to her mother, with the kind of presence you only feel from a priest in front of an altar. Often beneath a downlight, as if chosen by God to be the receiver of that single ray of sunshine through the clouds, Charlotte commanded us. Rather than demanding attention, the audience was captured by the spirit of the show as Charlotte played across every inch of space – running, climbing, crouching, spinning and rolling around the set, dancing in stained glass as if under the rainbow flashing lights of a club.
The Changelings constructed an atmosphere of joy in mass with the unifying sound of Bonnie and Micaela on guitar, synth and drums, with amusing, strange and often haunting backing vocals. The performance of new wave inspired rock ballads as Charlotte projected audience call backs intensified this feeling of liturgy, and made it really fucking fun. The camp sound lifted you just far enough above the often serious tone of the show to see the scenes with a humoured clarity, before moments of pause and reflection grounded you again. These moments of pause were often a meta communion with the audience as Charlotte stepped back from the show to speak with us about its own creation and purpose, guiding us deeper into the experience.
The Changelings was indeed an experience, curated to perfection. Beyond the evocative musical composition, and the performances of Charlotte, Bonnie and Micaela, the set was seemingly a force of its own as it continued to open up as the show progressed. Every cue was hit with divine timing as spaces of colour and white light led us into holy emotion. It is rare to be so profoundly moved by a performance, and The Changelings exceeded all expectations one may often have of independent theatre. One point in the show personally moved me above the rest as Charlotte shared her opinion of stories with us: that they are told to share what cannot be said plainly. This story was far from plain, but a parable stirring the often repressed desire for true connection with the souls around us, to play with life’s inherent abundance by embracing the magic, and the weird. The Changelings teaches us to be grateful for our weird mums who do just that, for stories, for magic, for all that lifts us up to be more than just mother or daughter, more than just a part. If Charlotte were a priest, fairy bread is her Eucharist, and she brought us together to just be.
The Changelings played at PACT from 19 - 22 June 2024. Find information here.
Zoe Witenden wishes she was a teenager now instead of when she actually was one because it might have sucked a bit less. She is a bit of a sook and a bit more of a perfectionist. You can find her taking selfies @quitezo.
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