Deceived
If you want a pleasant night out in San Diego, Deceivedis perfect. The actors do their jobs. There is nothing too intense or cerebral about the production. Your time spent pre-show and during intermission on the Globe grounds gazing up at the California Tower may be transcendent. And if you have distant, vague memories of the film Gaslight, this production will affirm your sense of that story's drama, while adding what Artistic Director Barry Edelstein calls “a contemporary energy and sense of urgency” that is missing in the original version.
But if you want a great (and spoiler-free) night at the theater, stop reading here. Because I’m going to talk about how not to tell the story of a man who sets out to destroy a woman by making her doubt herself and rely on him.
When the “curtain” rose on the intimate, theater-in-the-round venue, the set was pleasingly Victorian in its furniture and clutter and darkly promising in its prominent gas chandelier — the one that flickers so alarmingly in the film. But that intimacy could have been and should have been translated into a sense of claustrophobia — the world closing in on a woman who feels trapped by her surroundings and their effect on her mind — and it wasn’t. If you make the stage was the entire universe of the play, there is no outside perspective from which to view its smallness. How not to tell a story.
This production excises other noirelements of the film as well. The room is too bright and the flickering of the gas too subtle to produce any sense of unease in the audience. The mysterious sounds from the attic are neither loud enough nor spooky enough. Travis Van Winkle as Jack is not in any way threatening — lacking both Charles Boyer’s physicality and restrained but brooding energy. Brittany Bellizeare as Bella lacks the vulnerability and innocence that won Ingrid Bergman her first Academy Award. (And I hate myself for admitting this, but I spent far too much time trying to figure out what sort of vision produced her silly costumes.)
Of course, it's not fair to criticize one thing simply because it's not another — a production, a performance, an interpretation. But to my mind, none of this production’s changes added “energy and a sense of urgency” to the story. Rather the opposite. As presented, the goal was perhaps unattainable: how to create a sense of dread when the victim/heroine is clearly competent to solve the problem herself? Gaslighting works only when it exploits a weakness.Here, the maid Elizabeth’s role in the denouement is given to Bella herself, ironically removing agency from the working class and giving it to the elite. The other working-class character, Nancy, is transformed from a somewhat trampy but innocent bystander into a psychopath who understands what’s happening but despises Bella, and who uses her sexuality to benefit from Bella’s victimhood. Yay for agency!
When
Ongoing until Sunday, September 7, 2025
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Thursdays, 7:30pm |
| Fridays, 7:30pm |
| Saturdays, 7:30pm |