By James Karas
When you learn that the top floor of a big house is boarded up and
nobody, but nobody is allowed to go
up there, you sit up and try to figure out “why.”
That is one of the questions you ask yourself in Patrick Hamilton’s
Gaslight, now playing at the Ed Mirvish Theatre. Of course, the play is
a whodunit and it piles on the mysteries, drops some clues and keeps you going
for a couple of hours of entertainment until there is a resolution.
Ian McElhinney, Flora
Montgomery and Owen Teale in GASLIGHT ©2016, Cylla von Tiedemann
You can set a mystery wherever you want, I suppose, but there is no
better place than a large house in Victorian England. The spacious drawing room
with heavy velvet curtains, dark wallpaper, walnut furniture and gaslights makes
the quintessential setting for unravelling incomprehensible conduct and events.
Mr. Manningham (Owen Teale) is a patriarchal tyrant who runs his house and
his wife with an iron fist. Poor Mrs. Manningham (Flora Montgomery). Just as he
makes her deliciously happy by promising to take her to the theatre, all hell
breaks loose when he notices that a picture has been taken off the wall. Mr. Manningham
becomes furious and demands to know why she took it down and where it is.
She pleads innocence and ignorance with vehement fervour including
kissing the bible. The two servants, the fetching Nancy (Emily Head) and the
older Elizabeth (Victoria Lennox) kiss the bible to assert their innocence. Conclusion: Mrs. Manningham is crazy. Even she
begins to doubt her sanity as Mr. Manningham threatens to bring a doctor and
ship her to a loony bin.
After Mr. Manningham has gone to his club (or has he?), Inspector Rough
(Ian McElhinney) arrives and he delivers some startling news about murder,
robbery, strange happenings and some missing rubies. Why do the gaslights dim
and what are those steps on the top floor? The plot has thickened to the
breaking point and after some very considerable tension, it begins to unravel.
Flora Montgomery has the toughest role in the play. She is a woman
driven to the brink of insanity by an abusive and tyrannical husband. She is
terrified by her husband, abused by the maid and scared by the inspector as she
tries to maintain her composure. That is a loaded role and Montgomery does a
superb job.
Teale is very good as the obnoxious husband whose relationship with the
maid is outside usual employment standards. He can be affable but underneath
that pose there is cunning and evil. He goes from cajoler to stentorian bully
and we watch him with fascination.
McElhinney gives us an affable inspector, ready with a laugh and
charming approach but keenly observant. We want him on our side otherwise we
may never know what is happening on the top floor.
Gaslight is a classic in its genre. Directed by David
Gilmore, it provides a couple of hours of entertainment. You know a mystery is
good when, during intermission, people are asking each other who they think did
it.
__________
Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton
continues until February 28, 2016
at The Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com
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