I like modern takes on old plays or innovative and different staging. It can throw a new perspective on familiar texts or access to historic pieces you don't always get in traditional staging. What I don't like is when a production feels like it is different for the sake of it or that someone has come up with good idea and then milked it to the point of ridiculousness.

The Changeling is a play I studied at Uni or at least the underlined quotes and notes in the margin of my dog-eared copy of five Middleton plays imply I studied it but none of the story or quotes came flooding back as I watched last night so I was essentially seeing it as new.

It's good Jacobean fare in that there is love, lust, violence and murder. Joanna (Jessica Raine) is lusted after by De Flores (Daniel Cerqueira) her father's ugly servant whom she abhors. Joanna is set to marry Alonzo (Duncan Wisbey) but she's not keen on him either and would rather marry Alsemero (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith).

In desperation, as her wedding day approaches, she asks De Flores to help her get Alonzo out of the way and of course once the deed is done he isn't going to accept cold hard cash for his troubles.

Performed in the Young Vic's smaller Maria theatre director Joe Hill-Gibbon's action takes place with the audience sat around four sides. Those seated downstairs are mainly in little boxed off galleries although there are three wheelchairs, almost in the thick of the action, for those feeling brave*. Pretty much all of the props and bits of furniture are in the space already and either quickly wheeled into place or with the action moving to the furniture.

There are some nicely clever staging techniques mainly involving people in cabinets and large boxes but I won't spoil it too much. The wedding sequence was a nice little touch providing a neat musical interlude with all the guest and bride and groom dancing in sequence to Beyonce's Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).