Gaslight
Patrick Hamilton
Directed by Simon Rudkin
The Questors Theatre
Star rating 3.5
This is an interesting and brave account of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play – now famous for lexicographical reasons which the playwright couldn’t have anticipated.
It’s the 1880s and we’re in a comfortable sitting room – literally gaslit of course. The use of Questor Theatre’s studio space, configured with seating on three sides makes for unsettling intimacy although the way the director has blocked this play sometimes makes it difficult to hear. Alex Marker’s set includes a mysterious back wall with visible red neon gas pipes, an octagonal – faintly arachnoid floor pattern – and late Victorian furniture.
This is the home of Jack Manningham (Dan Dawes) and his wife Bella (Hannah Rosumund). The tension between them is palpable from the very first line. He is clearly manipulative and, when angry, addresses her abusively. Mysteriously he goes out every night and she doesn’t know where. Dawes does the range of moods rather well and creates an unpleasant character you definitely wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of. For her part Bella – strong performance from Rosamund – tries to comply but she’s very troubled because she’s constantly accused of things she hasn’t done. She begins to doubt her own mind not least because there is family history of insanity. And that seems to be what he wants. Seems. Shades of Shakespeare’s line in Measure for Measure: “If power change purpose, what our seemers be.”
It is possible, of course, that she’s manipulating him rather than the other way round especially after the arrival of the slightly unreal Inspector Rough (David Sellar) who feeds her whisky and a shocking story which plunges the plot into the realms of murder mystery. Who is “gaslighting” whom? The point is, I suppose, that we all lose track of the truth when persuasive people keep insisting on their own narratives – and that is as topical now as it was in 1938 or in 1944 when a film verson of this play arrived in cinemas. And, in this production, we get an alternative ending, with permission from the Partrick Hamilton estate. Some notes found in his locked desk decades after his death apparently And that sounds, in itself, like something out of a play.
There are two pretty good support performances in this show: Lucy Aley-Parker as Elizabeth, the decent senior maid and Talitha Went as the insolent younger one prepared to manipulate her employer by offering favours.
This take on Gaslight feels quite traditional – it is, after, all a drawing room drama of sorts – and the director has eschewed gimmickry. There is a very grown up flavour to it too. The audience has to think as well as be entertained because the nuances are subtle.
I was especially intrigued to see Questors Theatre’s Gaslight because Patrick Hamilton, about whom I formerly knew almost nothing, seems to have been following me about in recent years. First there was Mark Farrelly’s fine one man play The Silence of Snow which led me to a couple of Hamilton’s novels. Then, coincidentally, I was invited to a study day in Brighton on Hamilton’s Gorse trilogy and his relationship with the West Pier. I also saw and reviewed a production of Rope at Upstairs at The Gatehouse. And now this. Suddenly Hamilton is everywhere.
