The Beacon – 20 October 2024

From the moment The Beacon started, I knew I was in good hands. The pre-show sound and projections had already grounded me firmly in the world of the play. The aesthetic was deeply entrancing and I was drawn into a world of artistic expression that held space for each character to have their own distinct reality despite the contradictions. The performances were stunning, haunting, and magnetic; despite their flaws, each character evoked empathy in their turn and held space for each other because they were all bonded to at least one other character by enough love to be invested in resolving the situation with kindness.

Bonnie (Ayana Workman) opened the show with a lengthy sex-infused description of the female experience as depicted in Beiv’s (Kate Mulgrew) abstract painting, which Beiv promptly declared was actually a painting of a blood orange. This was the beginning of a brilliant interwoven texture of people seeing who they expected to see in each other. Bonnie had recently married Beiv’s son Colm (Zach Appelman), who Bonnie saw as sweet and Beiv saw as sinister. Colm was driven by a strong moral compass that manifested as a masculine ego that didn’t care who he hurt. His childhood best friend Donal (Sean Bell) was deeply in love with him, and Colm was merely using him for sex. Bonnie’s discovery of this led to a fight that led her to flee Beiv’s home, straight into the arms of Ray (David Mattar Merten) who was making a podcast attempting to prove that Beiv had murdered her former husband, Michael. The enmeshment of these characters was astounding given how little they understood each other, and how deeply they believed that they understood themselves.

The conversations around gender were truly fascinating. Most of the characters openly acknowledged experiencing same sex attraction, and all but Colm openly explored the idea of gender fluidity in themselves and their relationships. There was a transformative conversation at the dinner table in which Beiv began to see herself in the Bonnie lass who had previously annoyed her, Bonnie began to see traces of Colm’s and Donal’s sexual entanglement, Colm began to see the depths of Donal’s romantic attachment to him, and Donal began to see that Colm was choosing Bonnie and would continue to do so. Most of this was subtext. A touch here. A glance there. A change of tone. A growing understanding. Those who put themselves out there had to pause to take a piece back. The text in this moment was about masculine and feminine energy, in which it became clear that Colm’s masculinity was important to him, perhaps because he felt an underpinning shame regarding his sexual history with men. Ironically, his rigidity regarding gender made him the one who didn’t fit.

Playwright Nancy Harris crafted a marvelous artistic world where openness was the norm, and explored what it would be like if sexual shame was abnormal and sexual freedom was just assumed. Bonnie cheats on Colm almost immediately after their wedding. Beiv runs out on Michael to start a lesbian commune. Donal never really comes out—he just dates blokes. This approach to gender and sexuality was mirrored in the bigger thematic concepts about art imitating life imitating art and how no matter what we look at in the world, we only see ourselves reflected. Despite Colm’s strong desire for moral superiority, he did not have an artistic understanding. He struggled to see and appreciate his mother’s art the same way he struggled to see and appreciate his true self. Yet towards the end, he asks an important question. Do we all have to be artists? Colm wants a departure from the kind of freedom the other characters find exciting because he is frightened of that kind of vulnerability. He believes his mother to have murdered his father; he has seen the depths of what people can do to each other and he is frightened of knowing he might have that capability in himself.

The design elements (Colm McNally, Liam Bellman-Sharp, Orla Long) kept each moment looking, sounding, and feeling like the work of art that The Beacon was. The world of this island felt far from the reality we live in, yet near to the reality we want to live in. Although many are afraid of being seen as themselves, a work of art, like a person, is never truly finished. Like all of these characters, we poke at things we ought to leave alone in the penetrating search for ourselves. This beautiful, provocative play is a reminder that we derive meaning not from ourselves, but from each other.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.