Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Nancy Harris’s heated new play THE BEACON attempts to balance juicy family drama and tense psychological thriller

• By drediman
• November 22, 2024
• No Comments

This week, I finally had the opportunity to catch up with Irish Repertory Theater’s fall offering — Nancy Harris’s heated new play The Beacon, which is enjoying its North American premiere with these performances (the limited Off-Broadway run concludes this weekend). Harris’s play tells the story of a renowned feminist Irish artist Beiv, who moves from Dublin to reside in her deceased husband’s cottage located on an island on the coast of West Cork, Ireland. When her estranged son Colm visits her at her new home from San Francisco — with his new young American wife in tow — both are forced to face the past and revisit the circumstances surrounding their husband/father’s mysterious death off the coast of the remote island.

Harris’s play is a curious beast that seems informed by many influences at once. Perhaps most of all, it calls to mind Martin McDonagh’s pungent, audacious early plays like The Beauty Queen of Leenane, particularly with respect to the toxic mother-child relationship at the core of the play. There is also a strong whiff of juicy (pulpy?) family dramas like Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, as well as hints of your generic psychological thrillers and your classic whodunits. The result is a somewhat overwrought drama — in fact, The Beacon often times borders on melodrama — that’s driven by repressed sexuality, tightly-held secrets, long-held grudges, and unfinished business. Although the play’s balancing act doesn’t always feel steady or perfectly calibrated, it’s nonetheless refreshing to have a strong woman of a certain age (Beiv) at the heart of the play.

The production by director Marc Atkinson Borrull can’t be faulted. Her staging is beautifully designed (special mention must go to the excellent sound and projection design duo of Liam Bellman-Sharpe and Colm McNally) and finely acted. The cast is lead by Orange Is the New Black‘s Kate Mulgrew in the central role of Beiv. Mulgrew’s larger-than-life acting style is well-suited to the confrontational role, with her dramatic flourishes often deliciously verging on camp. The actress is well-matched by Zach Appelman’s Colm, a convincing creation that is the epitome of toxic masculinity. Rounding out the cast are Sean Bell and Ayana Workman as, respectively, Colm’s former lover and current wife; both give layered, nuanced performances that are more than first meet that eye.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

THE BEACON
Off-Broadway, Play
Irish Repertory Theatre
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 24