Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 23
5.5/10
How much Gothic can an innocent young city like Sydney, so absorbed in trains and whales, bear? In less than six months we’ve had Frame Narrative, Dracula, The Woman in Black and now Gaslight. On this night’s evidence, that’s one too many. Gaslight, you see, is billed as a Victorian Gothic thriller, but when the audience laughs rather than gasps at the moments of highest tension, you know you’re in some bother.
Canadians Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson have adapted Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, which was also made into a film that won Ingrid Bergman an Oscar. Between them, the play and the film gave us “gaslighting” as a verb: undermining someone for personal gain. Wright and Jamieson intended was to empower the protagonist, Bella, so she can save herself from her dastardly husband, Jack, rather than needing another male to step in. So far, so good, except that, in so doing, they’ve torn much suspense out of the story’s fabric.
This Queensland production, directed by Lee Lewis, tries valiantly to save the play from itself, and, it frequently succeeds, because Lewis has cast it so well. The fabulous Kate Fitzpatrick makes a welcome return to a Sydney stage in the role of Elizabeth, the couple’s housekeeper. Fitzpatrick composes her face into a brick wall with a mouth, and puts more import into “You rang, sir?” than most of the lines seem to accommodate.
Casting Toby Schmitz as the ruthless Jack was smart, too. Anyone can play a scheming villain, but Schmitz, as well as being masterful in his early ominous restraint, innately lends the character some charisma, making it vaguely credible that Bella (Geraldine Hakewill) could fall for him, and be sucked in for so long. Courtney Cavallaro delineates Nancy, the maid, from the others’ stiffness via a combination of surliness and slovenliness, rather than giving us a full broadside of flirtatiousness. Nancy is also the sharpest blade in a rather blunt knife set.
Hakewill has a harder time. Her performance is certainly accomplished as she flutters about like a bird than cannot settle. The problem is that Bella is so ineffectual until she becomes resolute, and by then, just when our jaws should be tensing, the play turns into a comedy. Some of that amusement is intended (including in Bella winning out), but some because the drama’s overblown. At one point Jack says, “Isn’t that a bit melodramatic?”, and, compounded by the usually exceptional composer Paul Charlier doing his own bit to inflate it all, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the audience had shouted, “Yes!” The dialogue at such times corners the acting into an archness that can tip over into falseness, and Hakewill’s character suffers the most in this regard.
The upshot is work that is not just set in Victorian London, it feels like it’s being performed there, too. Renee Mulder gives us the expected wood-panelled set, yet, among the two dozen pictures on the walls, the all-important portrait of the house’s previous occupant, who was murdered, is too small for us to see her rather important ruby necklace.
Ultimately, it’s not creepy enough, and the tension doesn’t build in the way the idiom demands, with a kind of breathlessness being substituted. The key attraction in the latter stages for many in the audience came in seeing Jack get his comeuppance, but that felt more like a prequel to 9 to 5 than anything resembling a gothic thriller or psychological drama. See it for the actors rather than the play.
Until September 8.
https://www.roslynpackertheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2024/gaslight