“Deceived,” Bay Street Theater’s current production, now in previews with the opening night performance set for Saturday at 8 p.m., is billed as adapted from “Gaslight” by Patrick Hamilton. That 1938 play is a dark story of a marriage based on deceit, and a husband trying to drive his wife crazy in order to steal from her.
That much can be said about the 1940 British and 1944 American films, as well as “Deceived,” which has been adapted by Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson from the original play.
However, as conversations with Sheryl Kaller, the director, and Jason Ardizzone-West, the set designer, made clear, the new production, while set in the late-19th century, is very relevant to today’s world, where, as Ms. Kaller said, “media and dissemination of information is about control. That’s why it feels like such a prescient story today.”
The production has been streamlined to a cast of four characters: Bella, the wife, portrayed by Olivia Cygan, Jack, the husband (Sam Gravitte), and two servants, Nancy (Briana Carlson-Goodman) and Elizabeth (Mary Bacon).
The title “Gaslight” derives from the dimming of the gaslights in Bella and Jack’s home when Jack is away, a phenomenon he assures her is only in her imagination.
“We have a literal gas lantern that’s hanging, but it’s not hanging where you think,” said Mr. Ardizzone-West. “It’s outside of the room. It’s a literal expression of the actual gas lantern the characters are witnessing and responding to.”
As for the set itself, it’s obvious from talking with Mr. Ardizzone-West that it plays a particularly important role in the production. Its main floor floats about 12 inches above the floor of the theater without touching any walls, serving as a visual metaphor for Bella’s isolation from the world outside.
The living room is true to the time, with wood parquet floors, period furniture, and base molding. The ceiling is in its geometry period-accurate, but instead of being plaster it is actually a giant light box, Mr. Ardizzone-West explained.
“That luminous ceiling creates a very diffuse downlight representing the unseen presence of what’s happening on the second floor. The way we light the space, our room can sort of float in the void, or if we light the upstage area with the staircase and the elements up there we can connect the space to the theater.”
In an example of the set’s abstraction, that stairway goes nowhere, but suggests the attic, where Jack spends time searching for the missing jewels that have motivated his marriage to Bella. There is only one way in or out of the living room. Jack and the servants come and go, but Bella leaves the room so rarely that she seems bound to the space by Jack and his manipulation.
The 1944 film, directed by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman as the beleaguered wife and Charles Boyer as the manipulative husband, is familiar to so many viewers in part because it received seven Academy Award nominations, including best picture, and won a best actress nod for Bergman.
Ms. Kaller said, however, that while she had seen the film a long time ago, she did not revisit it for this production. “Most of my career is new plays, so for me, ‘baby eyes’ allow me to be most creative.”
She said that the original play and the films were done when “we were living in a society where only men could save everybody. In this adaptation the women are smarter and more proactive than in the earlier versions.”
She and Mr. Ardizzone-West have worked together on other productions. “What was very exciting about doing this together was that it relies so much on the physical space, and the tone and the atmosphere of what lighting and sound and set can do. It allows my work and the actors to be very rooted in naturalism and to be real people.”
“This play speaks so much to how we’re living,” she said. “On some level we are being gaslit every single day of our lives. The attempt to control Bella is symptomatic of trying to control other people.”
Ms. Kaller is a Tony-nominated director whose Broadway credits include Terrence McNally’s “Mothers and Sons” and Geoffrey Nauffts’s “Next Fall.” Her work has been seen at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Geffen Playhouse, the Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Bucks County Playhouse, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Ms. Cygan originated leading roles in Chicago at the Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatres and, most recently, at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gravitte has appeared on Broadway in “Wicked,” Off Broadway in “White Rose: The Musical,” and regionally across the country.
Ms. Bacon won Drama Desk Awards for playing Patti Stover in “Coal Country” at the Public Theater and Off Broadway for Susan in “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Ms. Carlson-Goodman recently finished her run in “Ragtime” at New York City Center, and has appeared on Broadway in “Les Miserablés,” “Hair,” and “Dr. Zhivago.”
Performances take place Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7, through July 20, but Friday and Saturday times vary because of the Fourth of July holiday weekend and the venue’s gala, which is set for July 12. Tickets range from $49.99 to $129.99. As of press time, only a handful remained for Saturday evening’s show.
