Psyhcological thriller unnerving audiences since 1938
Have you ever been the victim of “gaslighting”? In other words intentionally misled by someone else to make you doubt your own memory and sanity?
The term actually comes from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gaslight now playing at Vertigo Theatre. (Hamilton is also the man behind Rope which he penned in 1929.)
“It was hugely popular when it was first written in 1938. It cemented him as a playwright” says Anna Cummer who plays Bella Manningham in the Vertigo production — the same role Ingrid Bergman portrayed in the 1944 film adaptation though the character names differ.
While Cummer hasn’t seen the film — which also stars Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten — she says there are enough differences between the cinematic and stage versions that “you can’t use the movie to inform the experience of the play.”
At the story’s core is Bella’s belief that she is slowly going crazy a notion bolstered by the fact that her mother died in an insane asylum when she was just a child.
“She thinks she might be losing her mind. She’s forgetting events. She’s misplacing things. These are all tell-tale signs of insanity and madness” Cummer explains.
While her husband Mr. Manningham (Patrick McManus) seemingly is trying to cope with her mental disintegration the audience soon discovers that he may not be who he seems despite his charming suave exterior.
“The people closest to her may actually be the ones who are letting her down” Cummer says.
Rounding out the cast are a couple of servants — Nancy (Arielle Rombough) a saucy young thing who is in competition with Bella for Mr. Manningham’s attentions and Elizabeth (Elizabeth Stepkowski Tarhan) — along with Inspector Rough (Christopher Hunt) who has suspicions about what is really going on in the Manningham household.
Cummer whose last turn on the Calgary stage was in Theatre Calgary’s Pride and Prejudice says taking on the role of Bella was nothing short of challenging.
“Bella is very naive raw and infantile in her responses because she has been worn down so much over the five years of her marriage” Cummer says adding that she observed her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to see how someone who is so “emotionally available” — as toddlers are wont to be — behaves.
Adding to the show’s mystery are some long-lost rubies that have a connection to the Manningham house as well as a strange occurrence involving gaslights that Bella witnesses every evening when her husband goes out.
Christopher Newton the founding artistic director of Theatre Calgary in the late 1960s and also the artistic director of the prestigious Shaw Festival for two decades directs Vertigo’s production of the psychological thriller.
“Newton is a master of this genre…. He even introduced a mystery series at the Shaw Festival” says Cummer.
She says one reason Gaslight has stood the test of time is that there aren’t any “cracks” in the play.
“It’s a very rich text and the characters are so well developed…. It has the potential to be very melodramatic and Victorian in its presentation but in this case ‘Victorian’ is only a setting” Cummer adds.
While Gaslight marks Cummer’s first time acting in a mystery play she describes herself as “an avid mystery reader.”
“I have a whole list of mystery writers I devour. I like the figuring-it-out part” she says adding that as an actor the best part of the genre is the audience.
“It’s amazing to register [their] response.”
