The Beacon review: Stormy seas for West Cork-set play
Geraldine Hughes and Ayoola Smart in The Beacon at the Everyman. Picture: Miki Barlok
★★★☆☆
There’s no mistaking where we are with a bank of large video screens on the Everyman Theatre stage projecting images of a roiling ocean, and a smoke machine sending a veil of sea mist across the auditorium. It’s a bold and stylish opening to this play by Dublin writer Nancy Harris, originally commissioned by Druid Theatre.
The action takes place on an island off West Cork near the distinctive landmark of the title, where Beiv (Geraldine Hughes), a well-known artist, has taken up residence in her former summer home.
It’s not only the seas that are stormy; Beiv’s son Colm (Leonard Buckley) is visiting from the US with his new wife Bonnie (Ayoola Smart) and the tensions in the parental relationship rise immediately to the surface. The mysterious death of Beiv’s husband at sea has reared its head again, thanks to a prying podcaster, and to complicate matters, also present is Donal (Ross O’Donnellan) a surrogate son who has a tangled history with actual son Colm.
Harris is an accomplished writer with an impressive CV but she has thrown the kitchen sink at this script. Artistic selfishness, feminism, sexuality, repression, parental neglect, toxic masculinity, mental health, the prurience of true-crime podcasts, the summer home gentrification of coastal locations — there are so many topics and themes fighting for attention that none of it communicates any clear meaning, leaving the entire play struggling to find the right tone.
The murder mystery sub-plot is devoid of any suspense and pacing of scenes is erratic, with Beiv not present for much of the second half, and a jarringly superfluous appearance by podcaster Ray, gamely played by Stephen O’Leary. Dialogue is stilted at times, and while O’Donnellan tries his best with the Cork accent, the modulation is distractingly awry.
In contrast, Ayoola Smart, who grew up in West Cork, pulls off a very convincing American accent, complete with annoying Valley Girl intonation. The and star has real stage presence, the play coming alive in her sparky scenes with Bonnie.
There are striking touches in the direction and staging, including the silhouetted reveals during scene changes, lighting design and the plaintive and portentous soundscape. Overall, however, the production flounders, not helped by a convoluted and downbeat ending.
- is at the Everyman, Cork, until July 19
