Kate Mulgrew (right) is Beiv, an Irish artist, and Sean Bell is Donal, a family friend helping her with house repairs, in Nancy Harris's mystery play The Beacon.
Meet your new mother-in-law, Beiv (Kate Mulgrew): she’s Ireland’s “great feminist artist” who lives on a remote island off the coast of West Cork, has an acerbic wit and an imperious manner, a penchant for knocking down the walls of her house, a strained relationship with her son, and may have murdered her husband. Oh, and she didn’t know her son was married until you showed up with him from San Francisco. This is the situation that 23-year-old Bonnie (Ayana Workman) finds herself in at the outset of Nancy Harris’s overstuffed mystery The Beacon, which was commissioned by Druid Theatre Company and now arrives at the Irish Rep after a 2019 run at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
Bonnie (Ayana Workman, right) meets a true-crime podcaster, Ray (David Mattar Merten).
The drama unfolds in Beiv’s modern house (scenic design by Colm McNally) with glass walls and a view of the ocean, which, thanks to the excellent projection design (also by McNally), is more than just a backdrop: the ocean surges and even seems to submerge the house when the emotional content or mysterious circumstances of the play ratchet up. Marc Atkinson Borrull directs the fine cast, led by Mulgrew relishing the opportunity to inhabit the defiant and seemingly indomitable Beiv, who rejects any metaphorical interpretation of her art, including the painting of a blood orange that faces the audience for the entirety of the play, or any delving into her past.
Beiv’s son, Colm (Zach Appelman), is unpleasant from the start. A software designer in Silicon Valley who has married the much younger Bonnie, he clearly doesn’t want to be at Beiv’s and is mortified by her art and by the suspicions that the neighbors harbor about what exactly happened when her husband, Colm’s father, died in a sailing accident. Bonnie is naïve and overly ingratiating to both Colm and Beiv: “One of these days he’s gonna create his own app or write some great code and become like one of those Irish software billionaires we’re always reading about,” she says of Colm, and she apologizes to Beiv for being a “fan girl” of hers. The play never allows her character to become much more than this, a naïf who then serves as a plot point when she goes missing.
Colm (Zach Appelman, right) talks with Donal (Bell), after he’s been out sailing all night.
Among the repairs that Beiv is having done (thanks to money from the sale of the family’s Dublin house) is a new patio, which is being installed by Donal (Sean Bell), a childhood friend of Colm’s who has lost his way in life after a bad breakup. Colm and Donal have a complicated history, and soon a complicated present, though Donal is also protective of Beiv and sympathetic to Bonnie. Donal is tender yet tough, and tortured by some strong emotion brewing under his affable demeanor.
The missing walls and state of disrepair elsewhere in the house mean that everything is confined to the living and dining area; despite this compactness, some of the scene transitions are glacial, such as Beiv painstakingly moving and setting the table for dinner, further stretching an overlong play and creating an unwelcome sense of languor. The Beacon is ambitious in its desire to explore a bevy of subjects—the nature of abstract art, human sexuality, violence and intergenerational trauma, money and power dynamics, memory, cultural identity, and more. This ambition leads to excellent moments in the first act, when characters clash with hints of what is driving the conflict, though even here the arguments can feel repetitive. The fine performances at first override these issues.
Beiv and Colm have a final confrontation. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
But in the lengthy second act, a succession of twisty revelations pull the play in myriad directions and bury character exploration underneath the baggage of melodrama. The mystery and ambiguity are explained away in every detail, with few questions left to linger or haunt the imagination. The Irish Rep thrives on first-rate ensembles, and this group is no exception; Mulgrew and Bell are particular standouts. If only, like Beiv’s blood orange, the play could focus its energies and draw profound meaning from the stuff of everyday life.
The Beacon runs through Nov. 3 at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 W. 22nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available by visiting irishrep.org.
Playwright: Nancy Harris
Director: Marc Atkinson Borrull
Sets, Lighting & Projection Design: Colm McNally
Costumes: Orla Long
Sound Design & Original Music: Liam Bellman-Sharpe
