Gas Light is a 1938 thriller play, set in 1880s London, written by the British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton.

[1] Hamilton's play is a dark tale of a marriage based on deceit and trickery, and a husband committed to driving his wife insane in order to steal from her.

[1] Six years prior to the play Hamilton was hit by a drunk driver and dragged through the streets of London, leaving him with a limp, a paralysed arm, and a disfigured face.

The 1944 American version received seven nominations at the 17th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two, Best Actress (for Ingrid Bergman) and Best Production Design.

[7][8][9] The play is set in fog-bound London in 1880, at the upper middle class home of Jack Manningham and his wife Bella.

Bella is clearly on edge, and the stern reproaches of her overbearing husband (who flirts with the servants in front of his wife) make matters worse.

It becomes clear that Jack is intent on convincing Bella that she is going insane, even to the point of assuring her she is imagining that the gas light in the house is dimming.

[4] In the spring of 1941 Vincent Price and his wife, actress Edith Barrett, saw Gas Light performed in Los Angeles as a three-hander titled Five Chelsea Lane.

[12] In a long profile headlined “The Triumph of Traube,“ published on 14 March 1943, The New York Times described some of the challenges faced by the production, including the untimely opening date, two days before Pearl Harbor: “On Dec. 5 the play opened, on Dec. 6 the rave reviews had sent a long line of pilgrims to the theatre box office, on Dec. 7 the play was forgotten under the impact of the Japanese attack.

Angel Street wabbled momentarily then picked up its stride, which has hardly slackened since.”[14] The play transferred to the Bijou Theatre on 2 October 1944 and closed on 30 December 1944 after 1,295 performances.

[12] On 19 December 1941 The New York Times announced that Traube had cancelled a trip to the West Coast in order to form a touring company for Angel Street.

The New York Times reported an observation by Chicago critic Robert Pollak that "Not since Hellzapoppin had the crowd out front participated so heartily".

[19] On 19 August 1952 The New York Times announced that a new off-Broadway group, Hamilton-Bruder Productions (a partnership of Patrick Hamilton and Janet Bruders), was opening with a revival of Angel Street.

Starring Giovani Tozi and Erica Montanheiro, "Gaslight - A Toxic Relationship", features a 14-metre spider web on the set, and with doses of humor, the production is still running, as one of the greatest theatrical successes in the country.

Angel Street, which sent a chill up the spine of the Golden Theatre last evening, comes off the top part of the theatre's top shelf.” Atkinson praises Straube for matching “Hamilton’s skill in a tingling performance that fills the theater with an ominous and terrifying illusion” and commends all the actors, observing that Leo G. Carroll had his best role in years.

Just about 35 years ago...Patrick Hamilton's English thriller, Angel Street, opened on Broadway with resounding success.

Nothing is quite clever enough in Angel Street, and the atmosphere is so rarefied that the play is artistically in dire need of oxygen.”[30] On 24 May 2007, in her review of the Irish Repertory Theatre revival, The New York Times' Ginia Bellafante observed that Gaslight "established the blueprint for a kind of domestic-peril thriller... Every time an actress portrays the sort of wife who discovers that the greatest threat to her mental and physical safety is the man sitting in her breakfast nook, Mr. Hamilton’s estate ought to receive some type of remuneration....David Staller plays this undesirable husband as a man whose lust exempts nothing.

He appears onstage with the red cheeks of a Santa Claus, an ageing imp who hides out in nooks and corners, showing a benevolent sarcasm that teases Bella out of her dimwitted complacency".

[32] The story was dramatised as a half-hour radio play on the 3 February 1947 broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Charles Boyer and Susan Hayward.

[citation needed] A 2019 podcast adaptation starred Chloë Grace Moretz, though it was set in the modern day, and the plot was significantly modernised.