Nancy Harris’s The Beacon, making its North American debut at Irish Repertory Theater, is a little too well-crafted for its own good. The plot-heavy melodrama crowds in too many themes, ideas, and relationships and collapses under its own weight. We’ve got the feminist, independent artist angle represented by Beiv, an iron-willed painter (Kate Mulgrew in a bravura performance) struggling with a deep, dark secret. Her estranged son Colm (Zach Appelman) brings his new bride, the flaky American Bonnie (Ayana Workman) for an extended stay to Mom’s studio-home on one of the islands off the Western Irish coast, but his motives are mixed and somewhat unclear. Hanging around the edges and renovating Beiv’s home is Donal (Sean Bell), Colm’s boyhood pal and erstwhile gay lover. (The attractive, cosy set is by Colm McNally.) Mysterious deaths, long-buried resentments and observations on art make for a confusing and heady brew.
Director Marc Atkinson Borrull and the cast, which also includes David Mattar Merten as a sleazy podcaster who worms his way into Beiv’s home in search of a juicy scandal, do their level best to bring believability to this thriller, but it comes across as a steamy potboiler. Mulgrew almost brings it off with powerhouse lead limning. She’s given an award-bait climactic monologue calling for floods of emotion as Beiv reveals her big secret. But it’s also her quieter moments which make her characterization memorable. A sideways glance, a tilt of her head, a finger to her lips, all speak volumes. The Beacon could have done with more such subtext and less text.
