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I love Christmas, but December entertainment is so full of rich holiday treats that one starts to feel like an overstuffed goose. There are so many dancing mice and grinning carolers in fur-lined bonnets.
So it was bracing to go to Northlight Theatre in Skokie to see a little malice in “Gaslight,” Steven Dietz’s adaptation of the 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. It’s stylishly creepy, surprisingly funny and triumphantly feminist.
“Gaslight,” a story best known from the 1944 film version starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, is about a Victorian couple living in a big, luxurious house. They seem companionable and loving, at first. But Jack keeps accusing Bella of things she can’t remember doing—like putting his cufflinks in her desk or hiding his father’s picture. With a great show of patriarchal concern, he worries that she is losing her mind. She fears the same, especially because every time Jack leaves for the evening, she hears footsteps in a locked attic and sees the gas lamps flicker and dim.
We learn quickly that Jack, played with charismatic and slippery menace by Lawrence Grimm, is trying to drive Bella mad so he can take her property. Bella (Cheyenne Casebier) can’t figure out why Jack is treating her like this, until a Scotland Yard detective appears to tell her that Jack is not what he seems.
The movie version of this story is moody and atmospheric. But this play, directed by Jessica Thebus, is more like an old-fashioned detective caper, with many humorous moments. Timothy Edward Kane is hilarious as Sergeant Rough, bragging about his “saucy shirt” (an electric blue) and his skill at picking locks. There’s a nice bit of business where Rough is trying to hide from Jack but forgets his hat on a desk—it is so suspenseful that audience members were whispering “hat, hat” as if Rough could hear them.
Also funny are Kathy Scambiatterra as the maid Elizabeth, who shows her master a proper suspicion, and Janyce Caraballo as the flirtatious, rough-hewn maid Nancy, who has a few secrets of her own.
Underneath this witty crime story is a tale of horrific emotional abuse. Jack controls everything about Bella’s life, from where she sits to what she eats. He kisses her hand one moment and insults her the next, keeping her off-balance. Grimm’s Jack is simultaneously so charming and so snake-like that he makes your skin crawl.
To make this show work, you need a Bella who can be both beguiling and vulnerable, someone in peril who is nevertheless equipped with an inner steel. Casebier delivers with a portrayal of a complex woman fighting to be happy. “I want a tragedy and I shall have one,” she tells Jack, when he suggests she see a musical instead of a serious play. Later, she muses that she lives in a world of doubt, “not knowing what’s real and what’s imagined.” Casebier’s strong, nuanced performance puts us in Bella’s head, and we want her deliverance.
Other stars in this production include JR Lederle’s lighting design and Collette Pollard’s set, rich with decorative woodwork on the first floor, but depicting the upper floors as just scaffolding and windows, like a skeleton. Raquel Adorno supplies gorgeous late nineteenth-century costumes—Bella’s pink bustle is a thing of wonder.
The play and the movie gave birth to the term “gaslighting,” which means manipulating someone into believing things that aren’t true. It comes up so often in modern politics that it was Merriam-Webster’s 2022 word of the year. This play shows the courage needed to defend against it.
“Gaslight” runs through January 4 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Boulevard, Skokie. Tickets are $46-$98 plus fees, available at northlight.org.
