Review by Tony Frame. Venue 53. theSpace @ Surgeons Hall – Theatre 2

★★☆☆☆

A play within a play has Deborah Cincotta rehearsing the lead role in a stage version of the 1944 film Gaslight, in which Ingrid Bergman was the main star (this is where the definition of Gaslighting stems from). Deborah shares the stage with a young director (Kendall McDermott) who is juggling important phone calls (throughout the show) that relate to a possible promotion that will take her career to the next level. The drama here is that Deborah doesn’t feel she’s capable enough to act in this play, and that she’s being a burden to the director, who is also her daughter. Whilst this offers plenty of opportunity for the plot to grab onto any one of these issues and delve deep into them, what we are given instead is Deborah Cincotta telling us about all the many moments throughout her life where she’s been harassed at work and, ultimately, gaslit.

The problem I had (with the whole play itself) is that Deborah tells us all of this, instead of immersing us into any one of these scenarios properly. There is one instance where we are actually taken back into the past, to a situation where her boss gaslit her, but this scene literally lasts a few minutes and we don’t feel the connection and impact of it because we’ve not spent any time to relate to it and how it progressed. This was my main gripe with the show: too much of it was spent by Deborah telling us about all these stories and situations of gaslighting that she had endured over the years, whereas if she perhaps focused on just one or two of them, and how they developed, and how she was manipulated etc., then it would have been felt more by the audience.

Once the curtain came down, Deborah told us that ten weeks prior to bringing the show to the Fringe, her co-star (who played the director) pulled out, and the show had to be rewritten with her real-life daughter (Kendall McDermott) filling in for the role. This explains a few issues I had during the play: that the show hadn’t been rehearsed enough, and I didn’t think Kendall was a trained actor (she may not be). Certainly it felt like she was struggling keeping up with her co-star (Deborah) who was, at times, very engaging.

With a stronger re-write (this really should be a solo-show), and more focus on a few pivotal moments (less is sometimes more) this could be a compelling production, but ultimately, as it is, it felt rushed, and certainly with the admission at the end (about the co-star pulling out, and the show being re-written) I don’t know why the company didn’t bring this to the Fringe as a WIP, because then I’d be more forgiving with my final rating.