46 Beacon

by Bill Rosenfield

seen at the Trafalgar Studios Two on 13 April 2017

Alexander Lass directs Jay Taylor as Robert, a 30-something British actor taking a break from his London troubles in Boston, and Oliver Coopersmith as Alan, a teenage high-school student working at the theatre where Robert has a part in an Anouilh play. The play is set in Robert's room in the residential hotel on the prestigious Beacon Street, and concerns Robert's seduction of Alan one night in 1970.

Robert introduces the play as a reminiscence, enabling him to set the scene and to remind us that the period is post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS, a time in which someone like Robert could engage in casual sex with little fear, but in which someone like Alan could still be uncertain and isolated, nervous and yet curious, about being 'different' from the crowd he feels he would like to be part of. This gives the play, which is 'semi-autobiographical', a fable-like quality, as the boy's sexual awakening is almost devoid of risk: his fears are about unknown possibilities, not known threats.

Jay Taylor presents a personable, confidant Robert, aware of the cachet of his English accent and manners across the water, while Oliver Coopersmith conveys the adolescent's mixture of brash confidence and courteous diffidence. He's a bit lonely, a bit excited to be befriended by an actor when actors usually ignore the lowly theatre staff, but he's also a bit wary and more than a bit out of his depth as Robert plies him with gin and tonic ('like a bitter 7-up' he remarks naively).

Robert is not exactly predatory, though he knows what he wants and is sure that Alan wants it too. However, the boy's innocence, and his somewhat romantic assumption that sex is part of an emotional commitment and not just a physical encounter in isolation, force Robert to articulate his own assumptions about his life, and in the process to reveal both to Alan and perhaps also properly to himself some of the pain of his predicament. Though he insists that Alan has a lot of growing up to do, he does it as gently as he can, and there is a surprisingly tender conclusion in which the two speak of how they kept in touch for a while when Robert returned to England, but then lost contact.

There is much wisdom learned from experience in what Robert says, and also much to consider in Alan's probing questions; but the play does not feel preachy, and the articulate conversation does not feel too contrived, mingled as it is with the sexual tension and chemistry between the two characters. As an affectionate reminiscence it works well, and in the hands of this cast and creative team it is very enjoyable to watch.

There is a warning that the play contains 'brief nudity, strong sexual content and musical theatre references'. Indeed it does; but including the third item cleverly sends up the prurience which dictates the necessity of warning about the first two.