Past/Present/Future with Gaslight's Edward Dick

Edward Dick trained as an assistant director with renowned theatre company Cheek by Jowl.

One of the UK’s most dynamic young theatre-makers, he has directed productions across the country and abroad. Recent work includes The Pitchfork Disney at the Arcola; The Fastest Clock in the Universe at Hampstead Theatre; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Sydney Theatre Company; Twelfth Night at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park; Much Ado About Nothing in Singapore; Romeo and Juliet, the first tour from Shakespeare’s Globe in 400 years, and ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore at Southwark Playhouse.

His work in opera includes the UK premiere of Rossini’s Maometto Secondo (Garsington Opera); the world premiere of Tarik O’Regan‘s Heart of Darkness (Royal Opera House – South Bank Show award nomination); La Voix Humaine (Cheltenham Festival); The Rape of Lucretia (Aldeburgh) and The Turn of the Screw (King’s Head).

Ed’s first short film, An Act of Love (BBC Films / UKFC), starring Stephen Mangan and Gina McKee, premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2010 and has played at festivals around the word. He has recently completed a second short, That Woman (UKJF), with Maureen Lipman, as well as his first project for television, a Little Cracker for Hillbilly / Sky One.

PAST

I’ve got a special place in my heart for a production of ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore that I did almost ten years ago at Southwark Playhouse, with Mariah Gale, Charlie Cox and Lawrence Fox. I’d been Declan Donnellan‘s assistant, touring with Cheek by Jowl for several years, which was an extraordinary apprenticeship, and I was teaching a lot at Guildhall, but I needed to make my own work, and there was something at the core of that play that spoke very directly to me. I clearly remember thinking that this could be a complete disaster, and that that would be ok, and, looking back, I think that probably opened up the possibility of it working out.

There was very little money, but the right people found each other at the right time, and we made something that felt very alive and urgent. I suppose you want the things you work on to have those qualities all of the time, but it’s quite rare for the stars to align like that, and it gave me the confidence to move forward as a director.

PRESENT

I’m currently rehearsing Gaslight, [the psychological thriller by Patrick Hamilton] in Salisbury. It’s about a woman who’s being manipulated into thinking she’s going insane by her husband, and it’s pretty clear to me that Hamilton wrote it from a place of experience: the way Bella defends her husband even as she’s being abused by him is horribly true to life, and her eventual escape from him is very moving. It’s one of a fascinating handful of plays that have lent their names to terms that psychologists use now – to ‘gaslight’ someone is make them believe they’re losing their mind.

We’re building the production around a strange, expressionistic thread that runs through the text: it’s ambiguous whether the detective who comes to Bella’s aid is real, or whether he exists only in her imagination, a figure conjured up in the gas light by her unconscious to force her to confront the reality of her situation, and give her the strength to escape it. Of course Joseph Marcell, who’s playing the detective, is extremely real and brings a beautiful humanity to it, but I’d like the audience to be asking that question. The production takes place both in Bella’s drawing room and in her imagination, which I hope will allow the audience to access her emotional journey in quite a visceral and immediate way.

FUTURE

After Gaslight I’m going to make a short film in Finland. It’s an adaptation of a short story by the novelist Sarah Hall about a young British couple who visit a beautiful but ultimately deadly lake in Finland at a fragile point in their burgeoning relationship – it’s another psychological drama I suppose. I’ve directed a few short films and I wanted to have a go at making something with very little dialogue, where the drama and the meaning are communicated through image and acting and music, partly because that’s an enormous challenge for me as a theatre-maker who tends to work with words.

Gaslight runs at Salisbury Playhouse 6 February – 1 March 2014.

– Kris Hallett