Review: DECEIVED at Arizona Theatre Company

Guest contributor David Appleford gives thumbs up to Arizona Theatre Company’s production of DECEIVED. 

Patrick Hamilton’s Gas Light lit its first flame in 1938, a moody little stage thriller set in the fog-drenched backstreets of 1880s London. It was a venom-laced marital drama where domesticity was turned into a psychological trap.

Hollywood didn’t waste time. Britain gave it the silver-screen treatment in 1940, taut and grim. But it was George Cukor’s sumptuous 1944 American version that turned the story into a cultural landmark. Audiences saw Ingrid Bergman slowly unravel. Both films have their followers, and rightly so. One is noir-tight, the other velvet-slick, but both deliver the same chill.

Walk into Arizona Theatre Company’s new staging of Gaslight, now titled DECEIVED for the 21st century, and you slip down the rabbit hole of Victorian repression that’s laced with dread. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this new retelling is to be some polite dusting-off of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 classic; it’s a full-throated reimagining, courtesy of Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson. It understands both the terrifying timeliness of psychological manipulation and the sadistic charm of suspense when it’s done right.

Now playing at Tempe Center for The Arts in Tempe until November 9, director Jenn Thompson throws us head-first into this world on a set by Alexander Dodge that’s a stunner, with living room walls and a high ceiling displayed at odd angles like a fever dream, appearing as if the central character is perpetually trapped in a literal, living nightmare not of her making. Every creaky sound feels like a threat while gaslights flicker like they’re whispering lies. The play asks: What happens when the world convinces you you’re mad?  And how long can you hold on to who you are before you start slipping into who they say you are as every flicker of a light becomes an accusation?

The term gaslighting has in recent years slithered its way out of the theater and into our everyday lexicon like a venomous cobra.  It’s morphed into a modern psychological shorthand: the art of making someone doubt their own reality, even their sanity.  It’s lying with flair, and in its most polished form, gaslighting whispers. It doesn’t strike, it nudges, slowly, deliberately, until the victim’s certainty is eroded like a shoreline in a storm.

For those who recall Patrick Hamilton’s original, and the two films that followed, you’ll notice this new adaptation trims the cast, dispensing with the traditional police inspector and handing Laakan McHardy as Bella more agency, and she’s nothing short of luminous. She’s twitchy, fragile, fire-eyed, and beautifully undone. It’s a performance that slips between hysteria and fury with the precision of a scalpel. Her descent carries the slow horror of a woman gaslit by a society all too ready to doubt her.

Tony Roach as Jack Manningham is the kind of charming predator who could sell you poison in a perfume bottle.  He’s slick, magnetic, and horrifying in his calm; he’s a sociopath in a cravat. His chemistry with McHardy crackles, not with romance but with the slow burn of psychological warfare.

Amelia White is a quiet marvel as Elizabeth, the housekeeper who shifts gracefully between servant, confidante, and protector. She can coax a laugh with the simplest of gestures, yet deliver something ominous with just the right sting to raise tension in the room.

Sarah-Anne Martinez’s Nancy, by contrast, prowls the stage like a cat with a secret, making an entrance with sharp edges on full display. She’s both belligerent and calculating, and clearly playing her own game from the start. She may not look the part of a ladies’ maid, but that’s precisely the point.

DECEIVED is a savvy feminist update, but one that still can’t quite outrun the clunky machinery of the original. The villain’s “master plan” is a little overcomplicated, and seasoned mystery fans will no doubt have the culprit and the prize pegged before the first act is out. The real fun this time around is discovering what writer’s Wright and Jamieson have done with the piece and how this exemplary ATC cast act it out.

Costume designer Patrick Holt dresses the production in spot-on period styles, wisely resisting the temptation to overdress the characters beyond their upper-middle-class station in Victorian London. Jane Shaw’s sound design, meanwhile, weaves a subtle, almost subconscious unease through the theater with muted streets sounds indicating there is still a world outside that’s most powerful in its restraint, particularly when silence itself seems to press against the audience and all that is heard is the ticking of the clock on the mantel.

Under Thompson’s direction, DECEIVED unfolds with the pace of a thriller and the emotional precision of a drama, each moment carefully earned, every glance freighted with meaning. And in a final flourish of sensory manipulation, Philip Rosenberg’s lighting design all but gaslights the audience; now you see it, now you’re not sure you ever did. Though, at just over two hours, the tension falters with the inclusion of an intermission; the material would have been better served as an even tighter, ninety-minute one-act that never lets its grip slip.

DECEIVED, as presented by ATC, is ultimately fine theater. It’s the kind of show that when it ends, you leave questioning both the play and the world, and maybe even your own memory. Despite its length, director Thompson has delivered for ATC and local audiences a spellbinding, theatrical reminder that sometimes the most dangerous villains wear the most benign smiles, making it all the more terrifying, insidious, and all too real.

In an age obsessed with determining the difference between truth and conspiracy theories, gaslighting has become the buzzword for every corporate and political cover-up. But let’s not forget, the word began as theater. It began as performance, which, when you think about it, is only fitting; in order for it to be effective, the gaslighter has to be one heck of an actor.

DECEIVED runs through November 9th at Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W. Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, AZ -- 1-833-ATC-SEAT

Arizona Theatre Company -- https://atc.org/ -- 1-833-ATC-SEAT (1-833-282-7328)

Photo credit to Tim Fuller – L to R: Laakan McHardy, Tony Roach

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