Major psychological thriller to tour Australia
One of Australia’s most accomplished actors and writers, Kate Fitzpatrick, will join the cast of the highly-anticipated play, Gaslight, which will tour across Australia from February 2024.
Perth-born, Adelaide-raised Kate Fitzpatrick is an actor and writer who has appeared in plays for just about every major theatre company in Australia as well as numerous TV and film productions.
Her extensive theatre credits include: Arcadia (Queensland Theatre); The Recruiting Officer (Melbourne Theatre Company); Hamlet on Ice, Celluloid Heroes, The Ride Across Lake Constance, Shadows of Blood, Rooted, Beyond Mozambique, Kennedy’s Children and On the Shore of the Wide World (The Nimrod /Stables /Belvoir).
She was Jenny Diver in Jim Sharman’s The Threepenny Opera, which opened the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, The Comedy of Errors, Don in Don Juan, Marguerite Gautier in The Lady of the Camelias, Marilyn Monroe in Insignificance (Playbox / Malthouse Theatre) and Mag in Big Toys, the play Patrick White wrote for her.
Kate is also an accomplished writer, essayist and humourist, with four published books, including Name dropping and Airmail. She has worked as a feature writer/columnist for major newspapers and journals, and on TV as an interviewer/presenter. In the summer of 1983-1984 she became the world’s first female cricket commentator on the Nine Network. Kate was also awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal for services to the theatre.
Also joining the cast of Gaslight is actor and writer Courtney Cavallaro. Upon graduating from WAAPA (Performance Making), she was awarded the Belinda Dunbar Prize which recognises the most out standing Bachelor of Performing Arts graduate and went on to be nominated as best newcomer in the WA Performing Arts Awards. Courtney was selected for the AFTRS National Talent camp, cast as Simone Sinclair in Irreverent (Netflix), and in 2023 Courtney made her Queensland Theatre debut in As You Like It.
Set to be one of the most talked about performances of 2024, Gaslight, a modern adaptation of the 1940’s suspenseful thriller by Patrick Hamilton, also stars Geraldine Hakewill and Toby Schmitz.
The highly-anticipated play, set in 1901 London, will be directed by Queensland Theatre’s Artistic Director Lee Lewis, and produced by Rodney Rigby for Newtheatricals (Come From Away, Jersey Boys, Good Night, Oscar starring Tony Award winner Sean Hayes) and Queensland Theatre. It has been adapted by respected Canadian writer / performers Patty Jamieson and Johnna Wright and world premiered at the internationally renowned Shaw Festival in Canada in 2022.
Producer Rodney Rigby:
I was interested in tackling a play that’s stood the test of time; intrigued millions both on stage and on film, and giving it a modern, 2024 twist. Could we explore a more relevant message and yet retain the thrills and suspense of the original? This new adaptation, starring Geraldine Hakewill and Toby Schmitz with Australia’s finest creative team under the direction of Lee Lewis delivers, creating an exciting new thriller for the theatre. I couldn’t be more excited to be producing Gaslight across the country.
Gaslight opens its Australian tour as the first performance in Queensland Theatre’s 2024 season and then tours to Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre, Regal Theatre in Perth, New castle’s Civic Centre, Riverside Theatre in Parramatta and Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney.
Patty Jamieson of their feminist adaptation:
In the original play, a police inspector solves the mystery. Our version started with a “What if” – what if there is no inspector? If no one comes to rescue her, can Bella rescue herself?.
Added Co-Creator Johnna Wright:
Gaslight still remains true to the classic genre though. There’s a hero and a villain, a spark of danger and moral injustice, and a breadcrumb trail of clues for the audience to follow. This is one of those rare, exciting refreshments of a classic thriller, with an added twist that means new suspense and new satisfaction.
Bella Manningham is a young wife who seemingly has it all – a nice home and a comfortable upper-middle class life. Her housekeepers, Elizabeth and Nancy, attend to her and help run the household. Her husband, Jack, appears attentive and loving. So why is Bella on edge? As we learn more about the Manningham household, it becomes clear that something is amiss.
Despite his doting appearance, Jack is hiding something – he keeps disappearing in the evenings and after he leaves, Bella hears strange sounds in the house. The gas lights dim for no apparent reason. Is Bella losing her grip on reality? Or is something more sinister afoot?
A much-used word in modern society, ‘gaslighting’ — psychologically manipulating people into questioning their own sanity — draws its origins from the play, in which the household’s gas lights flicker and dim on the evenings when Bella is alone, causing her to question her own sanity.
The original playwright of Gaslight was also no stranger to difficult circumstances. Born in Sussex, England in 1904, Patrick Hamilton’s parents were writers. However, due to his father’s alcoholism and financial mismanagement, his family spent much of his youth in boarding houses.
Gaslight – also known as Angel Street when it transferred to Broadway – was written during a particularly dark period in Hamilton’s life. Six years prior to its writing, Hamilton was hit by a drunk driver and dragged through the streets of London which left him with multiple disfiguring injuries. Two years later, his mother committed suicide. He suffered from depression and began drinking to deal with the symptoms of his illness. He died from cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure in 1962, at the age of 58.
Despite all of this, two of Hamilton’s plays became extraordinarily successful. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller Rope was based on Hamilton’s namesake play. The 1944 film of Gaslight starred a young Angela Lansbury and Ingrid Bergman who won an Academy Award for her performance. Angel Street was also a massive hit on Broadway and remains one of the longest-running non-musicals in Broadway history with 1,295 total performances.
Geraldine Hakewill is one of Australia’s best-known theatre and television performers. Graduating from WAAPA in 2008, she has since starred in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Fury, Baal, The Real Thing, Disgraced, Chimerica and Julius Caesar for the Sydney Theatre Company, Peter Pan for Belvoir, which toured to New York, Tartuffe for Bell Shakespeare Company, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice for Darlinghurst Theatre Company, and Macbeth for Melbourne Theatre Company.
Geraldine’s television credits include lead roles in Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, Wakefield and Wanted for which she was nominated for a TV Week Logie for Most Outstanding Newcomer.
Toby Schmitz is a respected writer, director and actor who was most recently seen on stage in Amadeus for Red Line opposite Michael Sheen. His other acting theatre credits include The Rover, Hamlet, The Wild Duck, Measure for Measure, Thyestes, Strange Interlude, Ruben Guthrie and Dance of Death for Belvoir, The Present, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties, Hanging Man, Rabbit and The Great for STC, Wild and The Importance of Being Earnest for MTC, Much Ado About Nothing for Bell Shakespeare, The Boyce Trilogy for Griffin Theatre, Degenerate Art for Red Line, which he wrote and directed.
Toby received Helpmann Award Nominations for his performances in Thyestes, Much Ado About Nothing and Ruben Guthrie, and Sydney Theatre Award Nominations for Howie The Rookie, The Great and Ruben Guthrie.
Lee Lewis is the Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre and one of Australia’s leading directors. For Queensland Theatre she has directed: First Casualty, Bernhardt/Hamlet, Return to the Dirt, Prima Facie, Our Town, Mouthpiece, Rice. For Griffin she has directed: Prima Facie, The Almighty Sometimes, Kill Climate Deniers, The Homosexuals or Faggots, Rice, Gloria, The Bleeding Tree (three Helpmann Awards), 8 Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography, Masquerade (co-directed with Sam Strong), Emerald City, A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il, The Serpent’s Table, Silent Disco, The Bull The Moon and the Coronet of Stars, The Call, A Hoax, and The Nightwatchman.
For Griffin and Bell Shakespeare she directed The Literati; for Bell Shakespeare: The School for Wives, Twelfth Night, for Belvoir: That Face, This Heaven, 2000 Feet Away, Half and Half, A Number, 7 Blowjobs and Ladybird; for Melbourne Theatre Company: Gloria, Hayfever, David Williamson’s Rupert, which toured to Washington DC as part of the World Stages International Arts Festival and to Sydney’s Theatre Royal in 2014; for Sydney Theatre Company: Mary Stuart, Honour, Love Lies Bleeding and ZEBRA!; for ATYP: Battlegrounds and Citizenship; for Darwin Festival Highway of Lost Hearts; for NIDA: After Dinner, Big Love, Shopping and Fucking, and The Winter’s Tale; and for WAAPA: As You Like It.
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