Martin Salter as Jack Manningham with wife
Bella, played by Bethany Grainger
Gaslight
The Nonentities
The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster
*****
The Nonentities return to full force with
a gripping production of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 acclaimed thriller,
Gaslight. The title of the play has passed into infamy as a single word
`Gaslighting’, which has come to represent the abusive and demeaning
nature of one individual against another person or group, in order to
belittle and thereby control them.
In the play, a man with a criminal past, Jack
Manningham, has married a young and impressionable young woman, Bella.
His overbearing and contradictory personality has reduced her to a
nervous wreck and his deliberate and cruel flirting with the servants;
further serves to undermine her confidence and standing in the house.
Yet Mr Manningham has an even darker secret
past. As Bella descends into believing she is mad, a saviour comes to
rescue her in the form of former Detective Mr Rough. He knows why
Manningham secretly leaves the house every night and is about to solve
the mystery of a case that has eluded him for 20 years.
It’s never easy playing the villain and Martin
Salter as Jack Manningham treated the character with the contradictory
attitude it needed. Polite and engaging one minute and sneeringly
dismissive of his wife Bella the next.
It’s easy to overdo such a complex man, knowing
the secrets his character is hiding. Mostly broodingly and sarcastically
polite, he saved the full energy of his rage for several choice moments,
stunning the audience with his forceful outbursts of anger.
Martin Salter's Manningham is wary of former
detective Mr Rough, played by Stuart Wishart with Bethany Grainger's
Bella a worried bystander
Nonentities’ mainstay, Stuart Wishart handed in
another stellar performance as the detective Mr Rough. The skill of
Hamilton’s writing comes in a very `Hitchcock’ way. Rough’s description
of his presence neither gives the game away or predicts the outcome and
therefore it’s imperative that an actor should be very precise in his
delivery as to critically move the plot forward with clarity for the
audience. Mr Wishart performed that task admirably and further points
were added for his light but persistent Scottish accent that never
faltered.
The role of Bella is a complex one. Constantly
expected to have to break down, cry, protest the disbelief and
exhaustion that the act of Gaslighting eventually brings to an
individual, is a heavy undertaking and Bethany Grainger in the role was
superb. Featuring in about 90 per cent of the play, all of which take
place in a single parlour room, she never once missed a beat and her
scenes with Mr Rough were fluent and focused, commanding the full
attention of the near full audience. It was clearly a joyous relief to
her at the curtain call to return to herself and enjoy the company’s
rapturous applause.
Great support came too in the form of Faye
Bingham as the flirty maid Nancy and Hannah Tolley as Housekeeper,
Elizabeth.
Directed by Tori Wakeman this crafted Victorian
thriller is the blueprint for so many `living with the enemy ‘thrillers
that followed. No other play has targeted a human failing so well as to
have its title posthumously elevated to a general an example of the
condition.
The Nonentities continue to produce challenging
and thoughtful work and prove once again they are at the top of their
game in delivering first class theatre to the region. To 06-11-21
Jeff Grant
01-11-21
The
Nonentities
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