A New Perspective on Gaslighting: 'Deceived' Reimagines Classic Tale at Bay Street

The term “gaslighting” is defined as manipulation using psychological methods in order to make someone question their own sanity or powers of reasoning.

And as buzzy as the word is today, its origin story has cinematic roots that date back almost a century.

In 1944, the Academy Award-winning psychological thriller “Gaslight” — adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, “Gas Light” — captured audiences with the slow unraveling of a woman’s sanity as her husband tricks her into thinking that she is losing her mind.

Decades later, the film also caught the attention of Sheryl Kaller, who was an undergraduate student at Emerson College in Boston when she saw it for the first time.

“I fell in love with that film. I think it’s terrific,” she said last week during a telephone interview. “I love the heightened drama. I do love scary movies that have to do with psychological drama — not so much guns and violence. I find psychological dramas fascinating. And I also feel that it’s really important to keep doing art that shows what women’s place is in society.”

And so, when she was invited by Bay Street Theater to direct a new adaptation of “Gaslight,” streamlined to a cast of just four actors — three of whom are women — she immediately accepted.

“I feel like it’s a very prescient story,” she said, “in light of the way that people are trying to control society by the way they decimate information.”

In “Deceived” — which runs through July 20 on the Sag Harbor stage — playwrights Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson reframed the story to strengthen and empower the central character of Bella, portrayed by Olivia Cygan. They stuck true to the original plot, Kaller explained, but gave the women more agency in it.

As for how the rest of the story plays out, that is a mystery.

“I can’t tell you much more, it gives it away too much,” Kaller said. “But it’s definitely an adaptation and it veers from the original film.”

Starring Mary Bacon as Elizabeth, Briana Carlson-Goodman as Nancy and Sam Gravitte as Jack, the play feels like a scavenger hunt, the director said, leaving it to the audience to suss out what is real and what is not.

“We’ve really created a playground,” she said. “The tone of a psychological thriller is very, very much the visual and the soundscape, and it’s allowing us to do it a little more cinematically than one would do theater, with underscore and sound effects — and maybe a portrait will light up.”

“I’m not saying yes or no,” she continued with a laugh. “And therefore, we, as the actors and as the director, we can just be human beings in this circumstance.”

It is a “supremely beautiful, human and female story,” Kaller said, and she approached it from a place of “the heart and the soul and the truth of the matter.”

But audiences will have to figure out exactly what that is for themselves.

“I want audiences to walk away not saying that people are stupid to believe people who tell them things,” she said. “I want them to walk away feeling that smart people can get fooled, too.”

“Deceived,” a new adaptation of the classic psychological thriller “Gas Light” by Patrick Hamilton, will run through July 20 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. No show on July 4. For times and ticket information, visit baystreet.org.