Review: GASLIGHT at Union Station

They say you never forget your first.  That was certainly the situation for a former Scotland Yard Police Inspector named Rough (played by John Rensenhouse).  Oddly, Inspector Rough had no known first name. Rough’s first bloody murder case in 1865 remained unsolved fifteen years after the event.

The victim was the widow Alice Barlow, an older, genteel lady living alone (except for a single hearing impaired maid) in a stylish townhouse in a better part of London.  Mrs. Barlow had been known to possess a cache of valuable rubies.  The Barlow home on Angel Street was ransacked.  The rubies had gone missing.  Had they been taken or had they been well hidden by Mrs. B?  Mrs. Barlow was found in a pool of her own blood on her living room floor.  After investigation, Scotland Yard concluded the Barlow case was a random burglary gone wrong.  Young Detective Rough was then in no position to disagree.

Inspector Rough moved on from Scotland Yard to a position in the private sector, but could not move on from the unsolved murder he had investigated as a junior detective.  Somehow, the Barlow case remained on his mind like a persistent itch left to fester under a celluloid shirt collar.  Inspector Rough wondered if Scotland Yard had got the case wrong.    

One might suppose the blood red stain left on the house’s pedigree caused the Angel Street house to sit vacant since poor Mrs. Barlow’s passing. Finally, in 1880, a couple named Manningham purchased the home.  She was a youngish woman of some means named Bella (Ashlee LaPine) and he was a well-groomed middle-aged man named Jack (Matthew J. Williamson).   The couple employeed two servants as was common in that day.  They are the stolid Elizabeth (Kendra Keller) and the flirtatious Nancy (Leah Dalrymple).

It turns out that the Maninghams are far from an ideal couple.  It does not take long for word of Bella’s eccentricities to become grist for the neighborhood gossip mill. Jack, it appears, spends each evening at his “club.”  According to neighborhood gossips, Bella worries about losing her mind and her husband while Jack flirts with the staff and leaves Bella with a pretty hard row to hoe.

Our play begins in the Maningham’s parlor. Bella seems nervous.  It has been suggested that she may need institutional confinement. She is terrified that, like her Mother, she might die at a young age in an institution.  Worse, now Bella thinks she is hearing things from a closed off portion of the house and perhaps seeing things connected to the home’s gas lighting system.  She sees lights dim at the same time unexplained sounds come from the unoccupied upper floors. It is several years until Thomas Edison’s electrical lighting system reaches most homes in London.

Bella struggles to cruise through life on an even keel.   She thinks she is doing better.  Husband Jack appears at first to be supportive.  He promises to take Bella to the theater, but it soon becomes clear that his offer may be hollow.  Jack accuses Bella of small offences.  Why has a picture moved from its place on the wall?  How has she lost a grocery bill?  Why has she not demanded better service from the servants?  Bella is threatened with confinement to her room.  Is Bella truly losing her mind?  Or is Jack deliberately attempting to make her believe so?  

For Inspector Rough, there seems something familiar about the man.  He leaves home on a schedule.  Perhaps middle-aged Jack requires further surveillance and investigation.  Inspector Rough finally makes himself known to Bella half way through Act I and spins out his suspicions. 

What happens next?  I will leave that to you to divine or find out for yourself in Act II.

Gaslight is a 1938 British confection by Patrick Hamilton.  It was quickly made into an iconic British film in 1940.   As Angel Street, the play garnered the attention of the actor Vincent Price and his wife.  They starred on Broadway as Bella and Jack for a year. Separately, the story became an Academy Award winning American film in 1944.

This production by the Kansas City Actor’s Theater directed by Cinnamon Schultz is a handsomely mounted iteration.   The cast is excellent overall, but this production belongs to a silky voiced John Rensenhouse as Inspector Rough.  He is sympathetic to Bella’s fears, but Columbo-like with some lines being rewarded with bursts of audience laughter.  He solves his case. Jack Manningham, here played Matthew J. Williamson, is villainously two-faced and misogynistic.  Ashlee LaPine as Bella is by turns terrified, and struggling for sanity.

I must admit to being slightly confused by Act I.  I had been advised that “Gaslight” was a suspenseful murder mystery. Film Noir and Murder Mysteries are two of my favorite genres.  I was never quite sure where the play was taking me until the appearance of Inspector Rough.  It seemed, somehow, that a bit of exposition was missing.

When we got home, I perused the TV offerings and discovered the 1940 British film version also written by Patrick Hamilton.  The playwright evidently agreed with me as the missing setup scenes had been appended to the beginning of the film.  The 1944 American version by George Cukor made the murder victim an opera singer and Bella her niece.
 

If you’ve gotten this far into this article, you have no further need for exposition.  Set by Vaughn Schultz and costumes by Nancy Robinson are appropriate to the show and period.   The show is worth your time for characterizations and the twists and turns through which it pulls its audience.  Without revealing the ending, I will admit that I was rooting for something a little more satisfying and Alfred Hitchcock-ian, but I’m sure it will occur to you also when you see it.  I think you will be fully satisfied none-the-less.

“Gaslight” continues at Union Station’s City Stage presented by Kansas City Actors Theatre through February 4, 2024.  Tickets are available online at the button below or by telephone at 816.361.5228.

Photos by Brian Paulette - courtesy of Kansas City Actors Theatre

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