Review: BACON, Riverside Studios
Photo credit: Ali Wright
After its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre in 2022, Sophie Swithinbank’s powerful coming-of-age drama Bacon is currently touring with support from HOME, Manchester. It’s a wonderful opportunity for wider audiences to witness this fraught and poignant exploration of burgeoning sexuality, homophobia and conflicts of masculinity.
Bacon centres around the reunion of two young men, Darren (William Robinson) and Mark (Corey Montague-Sholay), whose shared history is unravelled in flashbacks that chart the development and disintegration of an unlikely friendship.
Playwright Swithinbank is a master of contrast and conflict, deftly capturing the tonal shift between timelines and the disparity between the characters – the bolshy Darren and prime bullying target Mark. There is a particularly powerful dissonance in Darren’s character between who he is and who he wants to be, which Robinson conveys through his strained sarcasm and unnaturally pitched giggling masks a pain in his eyes and a crumpled quality in his bearing. Montague-Sholay’s portrayal of present-day Mark is penetratingly haunted.
Swithinbank’s play is sensitively directed by Matthew Iliffe, the suspenseful build of sexual tension realised with a measured mix of violence and vulnerability. A round of applause is owed to Jess Tucker Boyd’s fight and intimacy direction, which is slickly and seamlessly integrated into the action of the play.
The most visually striking element of this production, with stark and raw design by Natalie Johnson, is the oversized seesaw that dominates the stage. The end-on staging of this touring production loses some of the intimacy of the traverse staging in its previous iteration at the Finborough Theatre, but the seesaw is still an effective metaphor for the fluctuating power dynamics, and as a physical tool in fight scenes, character interactions and scene transitions.
Ryan Joseph Stafford’s Offie-nominated lighting design is elegant, efficient and atmospheric, starkly delineating the two timelines as well as the internal monologues and dialogues between the two principal characters.
Bacon is a raw and unflinching play that maintains a poignant and vulnerable heart. Harrowing and brutal at times, this is a play that resounds throughout the current climate of homophobia and repressed sexuality amongst young people. A must see and a must discuss.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
Bacon plays at Riverside Studios until 29 July before moving up to the Edinburgh Fringe, where it plays from 2 August.