Expect hissing: this play will animate an audience

It’s no surprise that the male lead in a new production of Gaslight gets a hard time from the audience. Ten minutes into the show during its recent premiere season in Brisbane, Toby Schmitz was being hissed. The veteran stage and screen actor was not at all bothered by this “visceral, vocal response”.

“It’s quite electric and it’s lovely to activate people like that,” he says.

Taken up by women everywhere in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the term “gaslight” was declared Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022. Defined as “behaviour that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful”, it describes a power imbalance that was famously captured in the 1944 film of the same name starring Ingrid Bergman as the victim of her husband’s psychological abuse.

Opening in Melbourne next week, this new joint production - between Rodney Rigby for New Theatricals and Queensland Theatre Company - casts Schmitz as the manipulative Jack Manningham and Geraldine Hakewill as his trusting and fragile wife, Bella. Struck by the audience’s antagonism to Jack, Hakewill asked Schmitz: “They love to hate you – are you OK with it?”

Hakewill, who has performed in dozens of plays, says the relationship she has with the audience in Gaslight is her most incredible yet. At one point in the show, a revelation brings the audience onside – in a very vocal way. “It’s like we’re playing the Australian Open and I’m Federer. And the crowd is on my side,” she says, laughing.

Gaslight, which also stars Kate Fitzpatrick and Courtney Cavallaro as the couple’s housekeepers, is directed by Lee Lewis. It was written by Canadians Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson, in a modern interpretation of the 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.

The adaptation centres Bella as an agent of her own destiny: she’s forced into that position because she’s isolated and there’s nobody to help her, Hakewill says. “She’s not sure who to trust within the household. It’s a wonderful predicament to put her in because it does force her to learn very quickly how to save herself.

“I thought that was really admirable and empowering – it’s not without fear and vulnerability. Which is something we want to explore in her as a character as well. I didn’t want the shift to be so drastic that she became someone that the audience couldn’t recognise themselves in.”

The boisterous audience reaction is in part thanks to the genre – it’s a thriller, complete with the mystery and drama and all the tropes that come with that. Lights turn on and off, and there are unexplained noises. “It allows people to invest and be freaked out and have adrenalin pumping through them,” Hakewill says.

The newly married Bella is very much in love with her husband. “She has a family history of mental health issues that is a recurring fear in her life. She’s been alone for a lot of her life and has found great comfort in her marriage and a great sense of belonging, and the fear of becoming like her mother who was unwell sits very close to the surface for her,” Hakewill says. “So when things are manifesting in the house that are unexplained and that no one else seems to be experiencing, it’s very, very frightening.”

Fresh from his role as the dodgy cop in Boy Swallows Universe, Schmitz hits the stage after several months working in the family bookshop, but says he gets daily feedback about the acclaimed Netflix adaptation of Trent Dalton’s 2018 novel. “I still haven’t seen it but my mum says it’s good,” he says, in all seriousness.

As for Gaslight, Schmitz is surprised we don’t see more thrillers on stage in this country. “Theatres, like churches, are already a little bit creepy, primed for things that go bump in the night. It’s pretty chuffing to be in something that makes me feel like the 12-year-old who loved the classic thriller.”

He says the play contains plot twists, thrills and chills. “Like all good thrillers, it’s also deeply punctuated with levity, good old-fashioned upstairs-downstairs gags, and a kind of escapism,” he says.

Hakewill says people empathise with Bellabecause her experience is universal. “I feel like I’m on this journey in the second half with the audience, and that’s so special. I find it very moving because I think her story is the story of so many women – and so many people – in the world.”

According to Hakewill, the writing plays with the audience and takes them on a deeper journey in uncovering what gaslighting is and how it manifests between people.

“When power is used on you to make you question your reality and doubt yourself, it’s very destabilising. I find it really moving to show a portrait of someone who manages to break through that and find a real sense of herself. But it’s not without its very frightening and harrowing moments – and who knows what happens in the end.”

There’s so much shame around vulnerability, Hakewill says. “Courage is not the absence of fear, and it’s far more interesting to see someone push through being terrified but still remaining steadfast in their ideals, and being able to stand up and look at someone in the eye.”

It’s one of the themes of the film she recently produced– The Rooster, starring Hugo Weaving – which was written and directed by her husband, fellow actor Mark Leonard Winter. “That’s what Mark was exploring in masculinity, but I think women feel it too. Especially when you’ve been made a fool of, someone has tricked you, lied to you, fabricated a world around you and you’ve believed it and you’ve given your heart to someone, there’s so much shame in that,” she says.

Even so, it’s important we allow ourselves to fail in that way, she argues. “You hope that people can find trust in other human beings; the only way to get through that is to allow ourselves to find strength and courage and to make choices.”

Hakewill describes the play as a relationship drama, looking at “how we hold power in relationships”. “It’s hard to give yourself over to someone completely and I find that really fascinating to play with as well.”

So how does Schmitz prepare for a role in which he is effectively the villain?

“It always starts with the text, and it’s a fairly workmanlike and boring response, but it does,” he says. “All my heroes do that. Every comma, every full stop means something. Every word means something. You get out the [Oxford English Dictionary] and you look up the roots of words you think you knew what they meant, you talk a lot, it’s all about words. Words, words, words. And then the other fun stuff is, ‘Can someone please Google, how did they butter a muffin in the 1900s?’ Everyone has a good laugh about that.”

He also loves costumes and getting the details right. “Looking at which waistcoat button the fob-watch chain should be in, all that stuff is delicious. But primarily, the juiciest, most beneficial work always comes from the text, in a room, with other theatre rats.”

Hakewill says the play achieves a difficult balancing act. “It’s tricky making a play around these topics because you want people to come and be entertained without making light of it, and that’s a testament to the writing and to Lee in particular, who is so clever and emotionally intelligent. She has so deftly handled the material, we are all very aware of the weight of the subject matter,” she says.

“Hopefully it’s the best of both worlds where people have really great invigorating conversations about it on the way home, however uncomfortable that might be.”

Gaslight is at the Comedy Theatre from March 8.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.