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Blackfoot Indian by Nancy Harris

October 16 2021

Sometimes we have to take care of things we’re frightened of. Sometimes we’re stuck with things that we don’t like. These are life skills. How do you know you have what it takes? There’s no preparation. You can’t know you’re up to the job of taking care of something until that thing is in front of you and it lives or dies.

Nancy Harris, Our New Girl

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I still dislike Nancy Harris!

Vor.

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Blown Away by ‘The Beacon’

I walked into the theatre not expecting to like Nancy Harris’ The Beacon, a co-production between The Gate Theatre and Druid Theatre Company showing as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Everything I’d read had simply put me off. There was so little information about it that I thought it was going to be boring and slow, nowhere mentioned how real the characters would feel or how sympathetic one would be towards them. It blew me away, a credit to both Nancy Harris and director Garry Hynes that my opinion was turned on its head.

The stage was set when I arrived in The Gate Theatre – a few chairs, a table in one corner covered in art supplies and a painting on canvas in the centre - devoid of any curtain or separation from the audience. The lights went down and people quietly trickled onto the set, taking their places.

It opens mid conversation – Bonnie, an American, is exclaiming how much she can see in Beiv’s abstract painting. She can see menstruation and abortion and genital mutilation and pain. Beiv patiently lets her go on about how much female suffering she can see before simply stating “It’s a blood orange.” Beiv’s son and Bonnie’s husband, Colm, is looking bored out of his skull and making condescending comments about art. This tells us almost everything we need to know about the three characters. Colm (Marty Rea), is a cynic. Bonnie (Rae Gray), is an optimist and Beiv (Jane Brennan) is more of a realist. Their differences do not make them harmonious.

Beiv is an artist from Dublin who has moved down to Cork to an island she used to holiday at with Colm and his father. Colm has been living in America for years as a software engineer and recently married Bonnie, who, from most accounts, was almost many things but nothing stuck. Bonnie is enamoured with Beiv and looks up to her as an inspiration while Colm has nothing but contempt for his mother. We wonder why he decided to stay with her for his honeymoon if he dislikes her that much, but it is never explained. One assumes it is Bonnie’s doing.

After he and his mother disagree on one thing after another - including but not limited to renovating the cottage, moving to Cork, trad music and the neighbours – Colm storms out to book a room at a nearby B&B. Bonnie stays and basically acts like a grown up version of child-who-won’t-stop-asking-questions-when-you’re-busy. In keeping with that, Beiv placates her with some charcoal and a page.

It is not long after this that we are introduced to Donal, a local boy who is doing the work on the cottage and who had his heart broken by Colm in the past. Donal (Ian-Lloyd Anderson) honestly held the entire play together – he knew how to deal with Beiv, he entertained Bonnie and talked to Colm. He was the backbone of the story and the only character who was affable. Beiv was too self-centred to be likable, Bonnie too irritating and Colm was just downright unpleasant.

The first half ended with a loud bang that made me jump, both physically and to conclusions, but it isn’t immediately clear what happened. That really symbolises the jump of intensity in the play though, and it gets darker and more serious from then on. We learn a lot more about the characters – Beiv, Colm and Donal especially, and how their pasts are tangled up in one another. In the end, even Colm learns to see truth in Beiv’s painting, supposedly a blood orange but it always looked more like waves to me.

Francis O’Connor’s set is wonderful in that it is simple yet also has the scope for so much more. It lets us see the story play out and the people come and go without getting in the way. It blends into the background and amplifies the story. Some sets are so distracting you can barely focus on the actors, that wasn’t an issue here. The lighting was also wonderfully executed – the back of the stage was entirely made of glass looking out onto the sea and the sky changed colour in accordance to the time of day, which really helped to set the scene and show the passage of time. As tensions rose it also reflected that with a coming storm and darkening of the sky. There wasn’t much background sound other than the sea, some sounds relating to that and a few instances of music. It helped with the remote feeling of the island and to situate it. The story was a quiet one, focusing mostly on the personal lives of the characters and a louder sound selection would have drowned that nuance out. The sound effects used were subtle.

I have to say that Harris’ dialogue is one of the most natural I’ve heard. It’s very real. One moment that comes to mind is when Colm and Bonnie have an argument. Colm has been drinking and Bonnie tells him that he’s being obnoxious, which he is. To that he replies, “So are you, but you’re American so you don’t notice.” I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve heard someone say something in the same vein as that. Quite often dialogue is only used to push the plot along and, as a result, doesn’t actually sound like something someone would say but Harris managed to do both, which is something that struck me very early on.

From others I’ve talked to this is a very divisive piece, they either seem to have loved it or loathed it. The same things I adored, others intensely disliked. Why not go and see for yourself which side you’re on? The Beacon is showing in Dublin until the 26th of October and you can buy tickets online from The Druid’s website – www.druid.ie – I can guarantee this is a performance you won’t forget, whether for good or for bad.