'I begin to doubt, don't you see? I begin to believe I imagine everything. Perhaps I do...'
Bella Manningham is going mad, 'stark gibbering mad' just like her mother. She must be: items go missing in her house; pictures disappear from walls, brooches, rings, keys, and pencils vanish, only to turn up in the most surprising places; lights flicker up and down; and she hears noises at night in the closed off rooms upstairs.
When Bella replaces her smelling salts for a stiff glass of whisky with a retired detective, the fog starts to clear. But what is the connection between all the strange goings-on around her and a violent murder and robbery twenty years ago?
A mystery with shades of Film Noir, Kai Fischer directs Patrick Hamilton's timeless psychological thriller which coined the term 'gaslighting'.
Restrained it may be, but Fischer’s production is no less compelling for its careful pacing. By blowing the dust off a popular favourite, the director allows for a somewhat deeper investigation of emotional abuse and domestic terror.
Fischer’s mix of melodrama, noir and something far stranger comes through the thumps and bumps of Matt Padden’s sound design by way of MJ McCarthy’s dream-like chanson.
Perth Theatre’s production of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gaslight makes an excellent evening’s theatre of what is, in truth, a pretty decent, if conventional, detective thriller.
Kai Fischer--Gaslight
Perth Theatre, Perth from Thursday March 21, 2019, until Saturday April 6, 2019. More info: www.horsecross.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews