GASLIGHT. To 25 November.
Hornchurch
GASLIGHT
by Patrick Hamilton
Queen’s Theatre To 25 November 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 23, 25 Nov 2.30pm
Audio-described 25 Nov 2.30pm
BSL Signed 22 Nov
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 01708 443333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 November
Drama and melodrama side by side.
Lowering music thunders. A tall, black-cloaked figure is glimpsed through the upper window of a sizeable house, triumphantly holding something in his hand. Then the façade of Victorian respectability splits open, revealing 2-storeys of a Victorian home, knick-knacks and over-furnished all. Except the living-room door is a narrow, rickety affair suspended alone; near it the wall is cut away. There’s a hollowness to the lives lived here.
Strangely, the glimpsed figure was James Earl Adair, who reappears as Rough the detective. True, he investigated the case involving that room 20 years ago, but the story’s point is that nothing was found. And he describes himself as having been too junior then to have his word heeded. Those 20 years have evidently taken him right through a career peaking in several notable detections to the calm of grey-haired, grey-moustached maturity.
Author Patrick Hamilton prescribes the time-leap. He doesn’t, though, ask for Rough to be Irish and, with so many Irish actors on Britain’s stages, stage-Oirish seems as false as blacked-up Othellos. Otherwise, Adair is a happily dapper Rough, slightly stooping yet vigorous in his deliberate manner, enjoying his approaching triumph over an old foe.
As that foe, Richard Brightiff avoids a heavy Victorian paterfamilias style. Plausibly pleasant-seeming initially, his nature as a calculating bully gradually becomes apparent, though given the vanishing smile of Barbara Hockaday’s maid on finding Bella unexpectedly present when she’s summoned, and the contrast between her insolent manner to her mistress and sexual suggestiveness to Manningfield, there’s a good chance he’s already indicated contempt for Bella and the desire for Nancy which takes a rough form when it comes.
Celia White’s Bella has a frilly Victorian prettiness and the tendency to instant alarm of someone without self-confidence, converting to nervy excitement when the tables are turned. Her final gesture has the melodramatic violence of a Sweeney Todd, or a modern slasher-movie. Such a touch continues the visceral edge of Bob Carlton’s revival, though Hamilton’s depressive drama works through contained, oppressive misery. But the audience responds; on opening night at least one enthusiastic voice cheering the triumphant Bella on.
Detective Rough: James Earl Adair
Mrs Manningfield: Celia White
Mr Manningfield: Richard Brightiff
Elizabeth: Esther Biddle
Nancy: Barbara Hockaday
Policemen: Steve Simmonds, David Grace
Director: Bob Carlton
Designer: Mark Walters
Lighting: Richard Godin
Voice coach: Edda Sharpe
2006-11-08 15:24:19