Beachy Head
Healing is at the core of Beachy Head, Analogue Theatre Company’s follow-up to their debut piece, Mile End. This forensic dissection of suicide, named after the country’s most notorious jump-spot, also begins with a lecture of sorts.
Here it’s by the doctor who did the post mortem on the body of Stephen, the young man whose self-inflicted death becomes the pivot on which the play hangs. She’s speaking into the camera being wielded by Joe and Matt, a pair of what we must call ‘creatives,’ who inadvertently witness Stephen’s death in real time while trawling the internet for a project on lighthouses.
As the pair pursue both the doctor and Stephen’s widow Amy, initially with little motivation other than to further their own ghastly careers, a portrait of Stephen emerges that will eventually allow Amy to move on.
All this sounds simple enough, but in Analogue’s collaborative hands, this devised piece serves up teasing little fragments of meticulously realised narrative that uses live video feeds and a busy but never overwhelming bag of tricks to set down its store. Directors Liam Jarvis and Hannah Barker gradually unravel a script by Dan Rebellato, Emma Jowett and Lewis Hetherington into a moving study of Stephen’s final hours. His inner life as an unfulfilled children’s writer, for instance, is crucial to his psychological make-up.
Analogue have raised their game considerably since Mile End, and with such a dramatic line of inquiry delivered so confidently, now must be considered the natural heirs to Suspect Culture and Frantic Assembly.