Shaw Festival
Through October 8
GASLIGHT Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival
By Augustine Warner
It’s strange that a word showing callous human behavior to another in the 21st Century refers back to a famous movie play and movie in the mid-20th Century referring, in turn, back to the late Victorian Age.
Joanna Wright and Patty Jamieson took the oft-told story “Angel Street” from Patrick Hamilton which Alfred Hitchcock put on the screen as “Gaslight” and gave it a feminist twist, heavily rewarded with applause late in the second act in the Royal George Theatre, in one specific scene.
Wright and Jamieson’s “Gaslight” is a wonderful show on Judith Bowden’s vaulted luxury set, to that time when coal gas lit the streets and the homes of the day and turned dark inside and outside to light.
The story has been played out in real life, the husband who tries to drive his wife crazy to persuade her to kill herself or to put her in a hospital and dally with a girlfriend or just take over her property and ride off into the sunset in a luxury car for two.
Relatively newly married Bella (Julie Lumsden) and Jack (André Morin) live in a middle-class home in one of London’s many squares in 1901, that wonderful time of transition from Queen-Empress Victoria to King Emperor Edward VII, the long golden time before 1914.
It’s not clear what Jack does but he goes off to work or to his club and talks vaguely of his dealings.
There’s also the steely veteran housekeeper Elizabeth (Kate Hennig) and the newly arrived sexy and arrogant maid Nancy (Julia Course).
Bella is clearly disturbed, with one of those mental problems so many men claimed so many women were prone to.
A key element in this story is that Bella’s relative was murdered in this very room and her jewels disappeared, a vast pool of cash for someone.
Periodically, the house echoes with sounds and crashes which Nancy and Elizabeth claim they aren’t hearing and Bella sinks deeper into despair, to the sense that Jack is right and she’s going mad.
That’s the first act.
In the second act, Bella gradually realizes what’s actually going on and starts to recover by fighting back to fend off Jack’s plan to lock her up and find the jewels.
You can feel the audience, heavily female the afternoon I saw the show, starting to support Jack getting his.
Director Kelli Fox has a strong cast to make this tangled story work, with the new twists the two veteran stage performers and directors have put into the script.
This has to be filled with strong performers because it would be easy for the story to turn into some quickie for the Lifetime Channel or a female detective story on Hallmark.
It doesn’t.
The ending doesn’t resolve the story, although it certainly suggests what will happen.
The underlying story also says something about not just male treatment of females but also that a woman would believe her husband, that she is disturbed and resting and staying in the house will resolve her problems (at least until Jack turns the screws again).
“Gaslight” is another one of those beautifully done plays which probably makes some audience members take another look at their relationships.
Even so, see it
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