As Gaslight illuminates the stage, no one escapes unscathed

As the curtain rises on the elaborate set of Gaslight at Civic Theatre, it's hard not to wonder how the players will similarly set the tone.

Rodney Rigby's production for NewTheatricals and Queensland Theatre (whose credits include stagings of Come From Away, Jersey Boys, Good Night, and Oscar on Broadway) of the period tale of a hemmed-in heroine driven to near-insanity at the mercy of her abusive domestic life, is sodden with modern relevance. The scene opens, the lights come up on a fantastically intricate set, and there is the immediate sense that whatever is said first will matter.

Toby Schmitz, as the enigmatic Jack Manningham - an outwardly doting husband to his young wife and heroine Bella as she appears to be losing her grip - lets the silence hang. For a few excruciating seconds, he barely moves. Then he sits. Then, silently, turns his attention to a cup of tea.

Not a word.

The first 20 seconds of the scene creates a tight, astringent, lingering silence, so tense that if you laid a bow on it, it would hold a note.

In a tale where everyone knows something and everyone has something to hide, the unsaid is like a brick dropped through the lungs and lands with a weighty punch in the pit of the stomach.

The play, written by British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton in 1938, is set in 1901 and tells the tale of a dark and twisted marriage festering in the lush opulence of an upper middle class manor. The classic, romping thriller coined the modern use of "gaslight" to describe the insidious machinations used by villains to manipulate their victims into questioning their own sanity.

The Australian production, adapted by Canadian writers Patty Jamieson and Johnna Wright, has been touring since February and opens in Newcastle on Wednesday night. Schmitz takes up the role of Jack to Geraldine Hakewill's Bella, and veteran thespian Kate Fitzpatrick's maid Elizabeth. Courtney Cavallaro plays the young and recent hire in the Manningham home, Nancy.

It's a naturalistic performance, Fitzpatrick says, that allows the players to drop into their characters and draw out the tension in every unspoken moment on stage. As the players swim in the intrigue of every scene, gripped audiences have been shouting from the pit.

"Elizabeth develops into quite a character," Fitzpatrick said with a wry smile. "You hear the audience gasp. They say 'No!'. People yell out at my character; one man yelled three times 'F--k you, Elizabeth!'"

On stage, and in character, Fitzpatrick is the consummate player - her role is dour, straight-faced and brutally stoic. There's the sense that she knows exactly what she's doing. One of her first lines is: "I know my duty".

For Schmitz, there is a kind of playfulness about the divide between the 20^th century set and the modern world beyond the footlights. When the chance comes to let that tense silence hang, he leans in. He remembers seeing Agatha Christie's famous period mystery The Mousetrap as a kid. Later, it was Woman in Black.

"I always wanted to be in something like this," he said.

"Thrillers are designed to make you lean in," he said with a gleeful glint in his eye. "There's a silence like that in the second half where you could hear a pin drop. People want to hear something and they don't want to hear anything; we've got them on a razor's edge."

He knows what he's doing, too. Even as he wrestles with his wife on stage, he is similarly toying with his audience.

"What is theatre but a kind of sophisticated, safe, gaslight?" he said. "That's been one of our thrills in the cast and in the production from the beginning."