GASLIGHT to Make Wisconsin Debut at Forward Theater

Forward Theater Company continues its 2026-27 season with the Wisconsin premiere of Gaslight by Steven Dietz, adapted from the original play by Patrick Hamilton. Directed by Jen Uphoff Gray. Performances are in the Playhouse at Overture Center for the Arts, October 29 – November 22.

THE STORY

Bella Manningham is frightfully happy. Except: she's been seeing things. Losing things. Forgetting things. Alone in a gloomy house in Gilded Age New York, as the gas lamps dim and flicker around her, Bella begins to wonder whether her hold on reality is slipping, and who among the people around her she can truly trust.

Patrick Hamilton's 1938 thriller gave the English language the word “gaslighting,” which Merriam-Webster named its 2022 Word of the Year. Edgar Award-winning playwright Steven Dietz, one of American Theatre magazine's 20 most-produced playwrights in America this season, keeps the original's period atmosphere and psychological suspense in his new adaptation, while allowing the story to resonate powerfully in the present.

“It's hard to remember that before Patrick Hamilton wrote this play, we didn't have a word for this kind of manipulation. Now we hear it almost every day,” noted Forward Theater Artistic Director Jen Uphoff Gray, who directs the production. “Steven Dietz has given us a version that keeps all the creaking floorboards and flickering lights that make the classic such a delicious thriller, but it also lets us sit with Bella in her uncertainty: wondering what's real, and who will believe her.”

“I hope audiences come for the chills. I also hope they leave thinking about how isolation makes all of us vulnerable, and how much it matters to have someone in our corner who says, 'I see it, too.'”

SPECIAL EVENTS

Film Screening: Gaslight (1944) – Thursday, October 15, 5:00pm, Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Ave., UW-Madison campus. Free and open to the public. The classic film starring Ingrid Bergman, presented in advance of Forward's stage production.

Educational class: Gaslight: Behind the Curtain – Tuesdays, October 13 & 20, 6:30-8:30pm, Rotunda Studio, Overture Center. Forward Theater's first-ever educational course draws back the curtain on how a production comes to the stage, from script analysis to casting, design, and construction. $150, limited to 20 participants. Register at forwardtheater.com/education.