Classic tale of murder and madness is still a thrill
Gaslight (New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham) Verdict: Puts a bump in the night ★★★★✩
CAN we still take Patrick Hamilton’s dusty old murder mystery seriously? Nowadays, psychological thrillers can employ all kinds of high-tech wizardry to spook us.
But when Hamilton wrote this melodrama in 1938, he had only his story-telling skills and a few theatrical tricks to make us sweat.
But sweat we do, in this touring production starring Kara Tointon, alongside Keith Allen and hunky Rupert Young.
Tointon is a young wife in Victorian London, dominated by her boorish husband (Young), who insists she’s losing her mind.
Along comes a retired detective (Allen) looking into an unsolved murder in her house; and her complaints about mysterious footfalls on the forbidden floor upstairs are given new meaning.
There’s little doubt about who the killer is, but Anthony Banks’s atmospheric production works a treat, spinning you along.
Tointon is a shallow-breathing neurotic at the start, winning our sympathy as a sweet, vulnerable creature. But nursing a worried expression, like she’s forgotten something serious, she also has fire in her soul. It would be easy to send this role up, but Tointon acts with total conviction.
Allen is the perfect antidote to her febrile dread. He is a stocky yet dandy detective brimming with loquacious self-belief, fuelled with shots from a hip flask.
Often a menacing actor, here Allen is excitable, breathy and bumptious, delighting the audience at one point with a camp little jig of self-congratulation.
As the inscrutable, irascible husband, Young towers over both of them. What he lacks in charm, he makes up for in roguish charisma and physical threat.
So OK, the play is hokey. But this production is tense enough to put a bump in your night. And with cheers and boos greeting the heroes and villain at the curtain call, it’s a resounding yes to whether it can still be taken seriously.