Cast

Synopsis

This well known Victorian thriller still has the power to grip the imagination and make the heart beat a little faster. Imagine being alone in a large old gloomy house full of shadows, where items disappear mysteriously and the gas lamps wax and wane for no apparent reason. Are the happenings real or is it all in your imagination? And then an uninvited guest arrives and tells you a tale of violence and murder….

Directors Notes

PATRICK HAMILTON, (1904-62) novelist and dramatist, author of three highly successful essays in the theatrical macabre – ROPE (1929), GASLIGHT (1938) and THE GOVERNESS (1945), all of them extremely well made thrillers with a dash of grand guignol. So says my PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF THE THEATRE. In another reference book, ROPE is described as one of Hitchcock’s stinkers. Talking of films reminds me that GASLIGHT has been filmed twice: with Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard and Robert Newton released in 1940 and in 1944 under the title THE MURDER IN THORNTON SQUARE with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Joseph Cotten and also with Angela Lansbury making her film debut as the uppity servant.

Thrillers were invented by Wilkie Collins well over a hundred years ago -fifteen plays including dramatisations of his more famous novels THE MOONSTONE and THE WOMAN IN WHITE.Edgar Wallace made a career out of thrillers in the twenties. Emlyn Williams’ NIGHT MUST FALL (1935) must be the classic though GASLIGHT, which followed a few years later, stands up well against it.

Thrillers are always popular: they are still being written because audiences have an appetite for suspense and like being frightened (especially if surrounded by friends). So sit back, make yourselves comfortable and we’ll try to give you the creeps.