Review: Orange Is the New Red for Kate Mulgrew in The Beacon at Irish Repertory Theatre

“You can really see the female rage,” says former art-history major Bonnie as she gushes over an abstract painting of crimson circles. “Like I’m instantly getting menstrual blood, the blood of childbirth … pretty much all of female suffering.” Beiv, the artist behind painting, replies, “It’s an orange.”

I too found myself searching that painting for meaning and maybe some clues about what lay ahead in Nancy Harris’s 2019 play The Beacon, now running at Irish Repertory Theatre. Like those swirly reds, the play asks us to consider how we interpret what we see and how we fill in blanks with what we want to see. It’s good to keep that in mind as you watch, because in its opening scenes, the play offers all the trappings of an intriguing thriller — a secluded seaside cottage, an unexplained death, a suspicious-acting wife who sketches a human skull. But while it might look at first like a thriller, Harris ultimately gives us something less exciting.

That’s too bad in a production that has great performances, starting with Kate Mulgrew as the crusty, misanthropic artist Beiv, casually clad in blue overalls and painter’s jacket (costumes by Orla Long). Her husband died years ago under strange circumstances near their cottage off the coast of West Cork in Ireland (his body was never found). Oddly enough, Beiv has decided to renovate the place with wall-to-wall windows. Just when she thinks she’s escaped a pesky podcaster (David Mattar Merten) who’s investigating her husband’s death, her distant son, Colm (Zach Appelman), pops in from San Francisco with his American newlywed, Bonnie (Ayana Workman), a 23-year-old chatterbox who can’t stop fangirling over Beiv’s paintings.

While on the island, Colm rekindles a friendship with construction worker Donal (Sean Bell), and it becomes apparent that the two have shared more than a beer. Other secrets begin to emerge as a wine-fueled dinner goes off the rails and Bonnie storms off into the night. As they troll the island and throw recriminations at each other, a mysterious skull sits ominously on a cement mixer outside, presiding over the family drama. Where exactly did that come from?

With eerie projections of the ocean (by Colm McNally) and menacing sound design (by Liam Bellman-Sharpe), director Marc Atkinson Borrull creates terrific tension that had me jumping in my seat at the surprising end of Act 1. Borrull does a great job conjuring a mysterious, distinctly Irish atmosphere that seems ready to burst with some horrific revelation.

Harris’s fishy characters rev up the suspense as well. Known for her don’t-fuck-with-me role as Red in Orange Is the New Black, Mulgrew is perfectly cast as the laconic artist and “ferociously selfish” mother who simply must be hiding a huge secret that she wants to confess. Why else expose yourself to the world by living in a glass house and naming one of your exhibits “Guilt”?

Workman’s Bonnie offers an ray of unwelcome sunshine to Beiv’s self-imposed gloom. She’s the kind of young enthusiast who lives for the chance to explain art to the people who make it. Workman and Mulgrew develop a quirky rapport that’s a cringy delight to watch.

Appelman has a more complicated role in Colm, a handsome software engineer who has no idea what he wants except the truth about what happened to his father. Appelman gets us to dislike Colm in a couple of fitful scenes with Bonnie and Donal, first as a blathering drunk, and then as a sad sack when Donal confronts him with the heartbreak of Colm’s rejection.

Second only to Mulgrew, however, Bell delivers the most impressive performance. His Donal reels us in with pained expressions of unrequited love steeled by a clenched jaw of stoic resolve. But is there something more insidious about him, like an alliance with Beiv to hide a secret in exchange for a top university degree? Bell dangles the idea in front of us with pregnant pauses and suspicious smiles, making us suspect there’s more to him than meets the eye.

That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself, though, because Harris never dives into those waters. In fact, she seems to avoid them entirely in exchange for a disquieting yet ultimately unsatisfying ending. Does Beiv finally come clean about what happened, or is she giving Colm another bit of blarney? I’d like to think I see that blood-red question in the painting, but it’s still probably just an orange.