Compulsion: A View from the Director's Chair

Abstract

This article illuminates the perspective of Sarah Harding, the director of Compulsion , an adaptation by Joshua St Johnston of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling for Ray Winstone's production company, Size Nine, screened on ITV in May 2009. It considers the position, originated by Gary Taylor, of Thomas Middleton as 'our contemporary' to validate Harding's lifelong fascination with the complexity and ambiguity of morality and desire in The Changeling and explores the ways in which this might be mapped onto a contemporary prime-time television drama. The film's re-telling of the plot through the eyes of Anjika ( Compulsion's British-Asian rending of Beatrice-Joanna) and the navigation of her sexual relationship with De Flores (recast in the film as Anjika's family's English chauffeur, Don Flowers) are presented in relation to contemporary concerns surrounding the complexity of women's newfound autonomy and their sexual relations with men: concerns which resonate with the early modern source text. The article addresses the difficulties faced in adapting an early modern tragedy for a television audience which was likely to be largely unfamiliar with it, and highlights the creative care taken over the presentation of the play's troubling sexual politics in particular. Also under consideration is the film's complex interweaving of references to Shakespeare and the counter-cultural tradition of 'Jacobean' screen performance personified by Derek Jarman, which hope to continue a thread of conversation with dead Jacobean authors while addressing a twenty-first-century audience.