The toxic burnt orange sky above the Old Vic every night is caused by overspill from the panoply of electric lights that litter London’s landmarks, roads, office blocks, bars, shops, museums and theatres. It is almost impossible to see your own shadow within the M25.
Peter Gill’s production of Patrick Hamilton’s Victorian thriller Gaslight harks back to a Sherlock Holmes world of servants and pea souper fogs where danger and intrigue lurk just out of sight in the gloom. All the action – or lack of it – takes place in a period drama drawing room impressively done, down to the last milk jug, by Hayden Griffin.
Gaslight is the story of Bella Manningham (Rosamund Pike) who believes she’s losing her mind: she can’t explain the disappearance of familiar objects, the mysterious footsteps in the attic or the ghostly flickering of the gaslights.
Her husband Jack (Kenneth Cranham) is far from sympathetic; he treats her with a mixture of brutality and violent contempt that is disturbing to a modern audience even in a week when Banaz Mahmod’s father and uncle were found guilty of murdering and burying her in a garden in an honour killing.
Help seems to be at hand for Bella in the person of the garrulous retired Inspector Rough (Andrew Woodall) and his brimming hip flask. Some of the inspector’s lines have become double entendres in the last 50 years and it is to Woodall’s credit that he keeps an admirably straight face throughout.
It seems that Jack is a murdering psychopath, with a penchant for the maid, bent on driving Bella out of her mind whilst he searches a locked attic for the hidden jewels of one of his victims. Far less farfetched than an episode of Eastenders.
Gaslight is old-fashioned three act theatre; the only twist is in the interval G & Ts but it is none the worse for that. Rosamund Pike delivers a consummate hunted performance and completely avoids bog standard ‘damsel in distress’. It is a rare pleasure to see a good story well told.
