Victorian Thriller GASLIGHT Comes to Pacific Resident Theatre

Pacific Resident Theatre launches the classic Victorian thriller, Gaslight, adding suspense and intrigue to its current season of world-class entertainment. This psychological thriller offers audiences a riveting counterpoint to the current hit comedy Fostered, running in the theatre next door. English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton, known for his chilling and atmospheric works, had his stories successfully adapted into films directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Rope 1948) and George Cukor (Gaslight 1944).  

Set in foggy 1880’s London, Gaslight is the story of a husband and a wife in conflict over reality and truth. Pulling viewers into a world of suspicion and manipulation, this masterfully written play, which gave rise to the term “gaslighting,” has captivated generations with its incisively sharp dialogue and unabating tension. Although the story was written in 1939, the significance of this play shines as brightly today in this age of heightened awareness around truth, control, and identity, becoming a chilling reminder of how easy it can be to question what we know to be real.

Artistic Director Marilyn Fox has scheduled this classic thriller into the season because, "Gaslight is a clever, suspenseful, enticing piece in the vein of the vintage style productions that PRT is known for. It holds a mirror to the present while echoing a past of internal uncertainty and turbulence. This play transports, and supports, our audiences during a time of social and psychological sensitivity, not unlike the challenges of a period and situation in which these characters exist. It connects us to a different century with a sense of familiarity as the playwright explores how easily truth can be distorted, how someone’s sense of reality is quietly undermined. Like pieces of a puzzle that come together, it connects us to that era, and to each other.” 

Patrick Hamilton (Playwright 1904-1962) was a well-regarded English playwright and novelist known for his distinctive style and ability to capture the atmosphere of London's working-class neighborhoods. His plays, like Gaslight and Rope, achieved great success and were adapted into films. His first published work was a poem, “Heaven” in the Poetry Review in 1919 when Patrick was 15 years old. He became a novelist in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America). The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935). Hangover Square (1941 is often judged to be his most accomplished work and still sells in paperback. 

Michael Rothhaar (Director) has worked at PRT, since 1992, as a director and actor with credits that include BROADWAY: The Front Page, and The Corn is Green; Off-Broadway: Frankenstein, and Brand; as well as appearances in various regional theatres such as the Mark Taper Forum, Geffen Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Cincinnati Playhouse, La Mirada Theatre and Olney Theatre.  His film and TV appearances include: Bones, Modern Family, True Blood, Longmire, Star Trek: TNG, The Nutty Professor, and Space Jam. Michael served as the Artistic Director of Pennsylvania's Allenberry Playhouse. 

CAST: Tania Getty as Mrs. Manningham (at PRT: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Women in Jeopardy!, All My Sons, A Bintel Brief, Cigarettes and Chocolate, The Cherry Orchard, Orpheus Descending, Alice Sit-By-The-Fire, Pygmalion, and Fata Morgana. Member PRT and the New America Theatre); Jaxon Duff Gwillim as Mr. Manningham (Pre-BROADWAY tour of MacBeth starring Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson, Noel Coward’s Present Laughter; at PRT Shaw’s s Mrs. Warren’s Profession and Candida both directed by Michael Rothhaar, as well as Death of a Salesman; Ray Cooney‘s There Goes The Bride at Sierra Rep, and Funny Money at the Norris Theatre, A Chorus of Disapproval at Odyssey Theatre, the award winning The Caretaker by Harold Pinter at the Zephyr with Robert Mandan, and Rogue Machine’s inaugural production of Compleat Female Stage Beauty); Stuart W. Howard as Rough (Disney Hall: Narrator for Glories of Shakespeare, Getty Museum Theater: Menelaus-Trojan Women, at PRT Otherwise Engaged, The Spy Who Went into Rehab, Herald in Marat/Sade, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Shawn in Playboy of the Western World, and Friar in Romeo & Juliet at Theatricum Botanicum); Rita Obermeyer as Elizabeth(selected credits include The Home for Fictional Characters, creating PRT’s concert space); Miranda Wynneas Nancy (Nina in last year’s Vanya Sonia Masha and Spike at PRT and Mrs. Swanson in Middletown. Selected credits include: Rotterdam at Kirk Douglas/Skylight Theatre - nominations for “Best Lead Performance” from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Stage Raw and Broadway World, Punk Rock at the Odyssey Theatre, Three Sisters at La Jolla Playhouse, Oppenheimer and Earthquakes in London at Rogue Machine Theatre). 

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