Is willowy Londoner Bella truly going mad, or is her enigmatic husband Jack carrying out a devious plot to convince her she’s losing her mind? And if so, to what end? In modern terms, Bella is desperately pondering whether Jack is trying to gaslight her into thinking she’s going insane.
The terminology and the plot of Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson’s Deceived, now at Everyman Theatre, derive from Patrick Hamilton’s Victorian thriller Gas Light, which premiered in 1938, before being adapted into the Oscar-winning 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman as distressed newlywed Paula.
Wright and Jamieson not only adapt Hamilton’s Gas Light but the work originally bore the same title. The name change signals the new work’s intent to center its heroine Bella (Katie Kleiger), primarily by removing from the story a male police inspector who helps the damsel in distress unravel the web of confusion ensnaring her.
The story is still set in 1911, but now Bella must save herself, or lose her mind trying. While increasingly doubting her own sanity, she must keep her wits about her to unravel the mystery. This involves copious snooping around the voluminous old house she shares with Jack (Zack Powell), caretaker Elizabeth (Deborah Hazlett), and housemaid Nancy (Em Whitworth), any or all of whom might be plotting against her.
Kleiger makes gripping work of Bella’s often wordless snooping and pondering, discovering and double-taking. Lushly outfitted in David Burdick’s period frocks, she conveys the character’s fragility, and customary inclination to trust her husband, as well as her sharp curiosity and determination.
Powell’s Jack is, by contrast, fairly one-dimensional. Meant to be opaque, the character barely registers any purpose until the plot absolutely requires him to do so. By the same token, we don’t know for certain what new maid Nancy is up to, but Whitworth gives her a blazing confidence that keeps us guessing.
Nancy’s sassy self-assurance rubs against Bella’s doubt and insecurity in all the right ways dramatically. Then, in the second act, Kleiger adds a layer of cunning to the portrayal as Bella attempts to seize control of the swirling plot.
All that’s missing from the performance, and the play, in general, is a layer of psychological terror. For all its mounting suspense, the production — staged by Everyman artistic director Vincent M. Lancisi — generates little sense of Bella feeling genuinely terrorized in her own home.
Rather, she is understandably disoriented by a misplaced necklace and a missing painting, and by the fact that she can’t remember hiring Nancy. Also, someone’s been dimming the gas lamps around the house. Perhaps it’s even Bella herself, and she’s blacking out and just doesn’t remember.
These occurrences might be enough to make a person question their sanity, or their spouse’s intentions, which should feel scarier. But as rendered here, the frights are low-stakes, rarely producing the breathless thrills or sort of fear onstage that might pull us closer to the edge of our seats.
Awkward timing in some transitions also blunts the tension, particularly during the purported shocking discovery that ends the first act. Fortunately, the main mystery remains compelling, and the atmosphere foreboding, thanks to well-conceived lighting (Harold F. Burgess II) and sound design (Sun Hee Kil), and Daniel Ettinger’s appropriately grand set for Bella and Jack’s well-appointed old house.
And to the credit of Lancisi and his cast, the production’s second act really picks up, culminating in an action-packed climax that, in the performance I attended, had the audience cheering for this woman standing up and fighting for herself, refusing to go out like a helpless fly caught in a web.
Deceived (★★★☆☆) runs through Jan. 4 at Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette Street in Baltimore, with a post-show Cast Conversation on Dec. 18. Tickets are $54 to $102, with Pay-What-You-Choose seats available at every performance. Call 410-752-2208 or visit everymantheatre.org.
Given how often today's news outlets distort the truth or report outright lies, it's almost comical that E.L. Doctorow's 1975 novel Ragtime was once dismissed by The New Yorker's editor William Shawn. Because Doctorow's tale, set in the early twentieth century, wove real historical figures into fictional lives, Shawn refused to publish a full-length review, calling the book "immoral."
Now, the musical adaptation returns with forceful, spectacular splendor at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre. And this second revival of the beloved story arrives on Broadway at just the right time.
About halfway through Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach directs a love scene. I don't mean that there is a sex scene (those rarely appear in Baumbach's cinematic universe, except the mortifyingly awkward kind). I mean that Baumbach himself appears onscreen, in a wink-nod cameo, as a fictitious filmmaker, choreographing an intimate scene between our hero, Jay Kelly (played in flashback by Charlie Rowe), and an actress playing his wife (Eve Hewson), who becomes his real-life paramour, though not real real-life, but -- ah, who's to say what's real anyway?
Baumbach has never been the sort of director to place himself onscreen, but the indulgence fits with a certain metatextual thread in Jay Kelly, a wry Hollywood satire and wistful character study infused with the director's signature familial discord. Here is a film about making sense of your life when, as Jay puts it, "all my memories are movies"; a film about sifting through the thin thread that separates public persona and private identity. How much of your life is real when millions of people know and adore you for playing someone else? And what about the real family you neglected to pursue those celluloid dreams -- is it too late to make amends?
You've heard of Chekhov's Gun. Now consider "Chekhov's Bees." If a backyard apiary of bees is introduced at the beginning of the movie, the bees will be whipped into a frenzy by the film's end, terrorizing some poor character.
Bugonia, the fiendishly funny new nightmare from Greek filmmaker/provocateur Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Lobster), bears out this theory. The bees belong to our troubled hero, Teddy Gatz (a shaggy-bearded, greasy-haired Jesse Plemons), a conspiracy theorist and amateur beekeeper who lives in an old house with his young, neurodivergent cousin, Don (newcomer Aidan Delbis). Teddy spends his days working a menial warehouse job and his nights traveling down YouTube rabbit holes and obsessively developing theories involving Andromedan aliens who intend to destroy humanity.
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