Angel Street Auditions
Angel Street (Gaslight) by Patrick Hamilton, directed by Krystle Bernier.
Audition dates: June 28 and 30, (Sunday and Tuesday), starting at 7PM. Callbacks will be on July 1.
Performances: October 9, 10, 11*, 16, 17, 18*, 23, and 24, at 8 pm (*2 pm Matinee)
To secure an audition, please fill out our online form
Synopsis
Angel Street (Gaslight) is a psychological thriller and the work that gave the modern world the term "gaslighting."
Set in fog-bound London in 1880, the play takes place almost entirely within the upper middle-class home of Jack and Bella Manningham, where small, strange things keep happening. Objects disappear. Sounds come from rooms that should be empty. And the gaslights, inexplicably, keep dimming.
Jack has an explanation for all of it. He always does.
As Bella's grip on her own reality begins to loosen, she begins to suspect that something—or someone—in the shadows of her own home is responsible for her unraveling. When an unexpected ally arrives with a story that reframes everything, the truth turns out to be darker than she imagined. And far more dangerous.
Madness, it turns out, was never what she had to fear.
A Note on This Production:
Angel Street is set in the 1880s, and we will honor that world and time period fully. But our approach to this story will be through a more modern lens and rooted in what the play is actually about: the quiet, deliberate erosion of a woman's sense of reality.
Gaslighting, as we understand it today, is not hysteria. It is not melodrama. It is subtle, incremental, and maddeningly difficult to name—and that is exactly how we intend to stage it. This production will lean fully into its genre as a psychological thriller; one that audiences will recognize, uncomfortably, as something very present and very real even in today's world.
No Monologues Required. Auditioners will be doing cold readings from the script.
Character Descriptions
Bella Manningham
Late 30s to early 40s
Almost regal in the way she holds herself outwardly to others, but is grappling internally with the quiet erosion of years under Jack’s control.
Synopsis: A woman of genuine intelligence, will, and presence who has been so systematically gaslit by her husband that she has begun to doubt her own sanity. The play is fundamentally the story of her reclamation (not rescue); the return of a self that was always there.
Accent: Received Pronunciation (“posh” British accent).
Jack Manningham
Early to mid 40s
Meticulously put-together; a man who invests in his own appearance as part of his method.
Synopsis: The antagonist, but never the obvious villain in the room. A man of extraordinary charm and cold intelligence who has constructed an entire domestic system of control around his wife, dismantling her sense of reality methodically. He believes his own justifications entirely and conceitedly, which makes him considerably more dangerous than a self-aware villain.
Accent: Received Pronunciation (“posh” British accent).
Inspector Rough
Mid to late 40s
Gruff but warm and approachable, in a lived-in way; the precise contrast to Jack Manningham’s carefully maintained appearance.
Synopsis: The catalyst and counterweight of the play. A former Scotland Yard inspector who has been tracking Jack Manningham for years and arrives at the house with his own agenda that happens to align with Bella’s salvation. He is not a romantic hero. He is a professional with warmth, and the external validation he brings begins Bella’s reclamation of reality.
Accent: Scottish, perhaps Irish. Must be distinguishable from the Manninghams.
Nancy
Mid to late 20s
Young enough that her confidence reads as boldness rather than experience; mature enough that her agency in the relationship with Manningham is apparent.
Synopsis: The housemaid whose relationship with Jack Manningham is the play’s most morally complex subplot. In this production, she is not a victim of his predation but a woman who has identified the one leverage point available to her and is using it consciously. Her clarity about the household (un-gaslit, clear-eyed) contrasts sharply with Bella’s enforced confusion. She understands the game better than anyone in the house, including Jack Manningham.
Accent: Cockney/ South London — look to real life or film examples rather than theatrical. She is clever, not comical.
Elizabeth
Late 40s to early 60s
The steadiness of someone who has learned to read rooms quickly and act without drawing attention to herself.
Synopsis: Bella’s housemaid and the play’s quiet moral anchor. Elevated in this production from functional character to genuine ally through her early witnessing of Bella’s internal struggle which creates a covenant of loyalty that ripples throughout the play. Warm but not soft, practical but not cold, with a fully inhabited interior life that the audience only glimpses through her scenes.
Accent: Lancashire/ Northern England. Perhaps Cockney but should be distinct in some way from Nancy.