The Lighthouse Review: A Devised Work of Intoxicating Tension

Nina de Jong reviews The Fletcher Players’ Society’s thrilling performance of The Lighthouse

The Fletcher Players Society

Lighthouse opens on a dreamy monologue delivered by Celine (Sophie Howe), a tortured writer, who tells us about the lighthouse metaphor that will ground the performance to follow. She tells us that lighthouses are deceptive as beacons of safety - in reality, they hold a sinister power, which one can recognise by how they flash, like a police siren. We are about to discover that Celine has just been mysteriously murdered outside a nightclub within metres of where her friends are descending into yet another messy, sad and drunken night out.

From this opening scene, the audience is then taken through the investigation of Celine’s murder, with interrogations led by a soft-spoken Detective Opal (Sam Carling). As each of Celine’s friends are questioned by the Detective, the evening of the murder at the nightclub is replayed from each new perspective. These transitions between memory and interrogation are beautifully smooth. The performers make a complex mix of flashbacks, imagined demons and present-moment scenes easy to follow with clear shifts in character and decisive movement between states. The fluidity of scene transitions, especially when there is no fade to black, strengthens the connectivity between the shifting realities of each suspect. As the audience member, you feel like you’re turning a small scene around in your hands, and the more you turn it this way and that, the more you understand what you are seeing. Interrogations continue, and both the events of the night and the true nature of each character are slowly revealed, until it all of a sudden, like a lens jumping into focus, it becomes clear who really murdered Celine.

The effects used in Lighthouse were thoughtful, well-placed and exciting. Early in the play, when Celine’s friend Lauren is undergoing her first round of questions by the Detective, accusations from performers seated in the audience are fired at her from the darkness like jumpscares as she begins to crack under the sharp questions from Detective Opal. It’s a shock that reminds you to pay attention; you don’t know where the next flash of information will be coming from. When it first becomes clear who murdered Celine, there is a false ending. The performers bow, and we, the audience, applaud, mulling over our unanswered questions. But suddenly the stage lights are dim again and the scene transitions skilfully into a second monologue by Celine, which spurs the story into a thrilling second half. Celine’s monologues are vital to the thematic grounding of the story and gorgeously delivered by Sophie Howe. Throughout the production, Howe forces Celine’s memory onto the living characters, her friends, filling them with guilt and neuroses.

The performers all have strong chemistry with each other, and this propels the story, giving the audience a reason to care for these losers who’ve let their friend get killed. There is a surprisingly warm and affecting relationship between the bartender, Loveday (Hannah Le Seelleur), and Celine. Loveday presents a bravado and apparent indifference to Celine during her interrogation, and indeed it is a tenuous relationship – a bartender and her alcoholic patron – that without proper grounding would seem trivial and forced. However, when the two women interact, it’s clear there is a genuine affection between characters that gives Loveday’s character context and a place in the story. The devising work and choreography in Lighthouse is powerful, emphasising relationships between characters in engaging physicality and dance. However, choreographed dance only really kicked off later in the performance, and it would have been lovely to see it earlier on, too.

The moments where tension peaks during the performance are signalled by stage-lights breaking down into an on and off blinking. The flashing light integrates the lighthouse metaphor beautifully and lets us know that we have arrived at the Lighthouse of the story. The deceptive, “background noise” character that the audience has been warned about is finally centre-stage: Detective Opal. To me, however, the true “Lighthouse” character seems misplaced. There is one character that the story revolves around, and who all the characters are connected to – Celine’s lover, Antoine. And it is Antoine that the audience never meets, who acts as shadowy “background noise” to the scenes playing in front of us. When Detective Opal, who Sam Carling does a fantastic job of revealing to be ever more sinister and cruel as the performance progresses, finally explains his motive for murder to a choking Celine, it feels unconvincing. His motive is simply not strong enough to kill Celine: Antoine, a man high up in some kind of organised world of crime, has demanded that the Detective watch Celine’s every move to ensure she doesn’t uncover any of his misdoings, and it’s getting in the way of the Detective’s other work. The Detective kills Celine just to get her out of the way. To have Antoine positioned as the ‘Lighthouse’ character, or a clearer and more compelling motive for murder from Detective Opal, would perhaps strengthen the thematic connection between murderer and lighthouse.

While the staging, choreography and lighting effects elevated the quality of the production, the use of accents felt unnecessary. Loveday’s accent sounded like an attempt at something East London, clearly chosen to pair with her role as a poor bartender. Inconsistencies in this accent gave the impression of a somewhat offensive caricature. Along the lines of voicing, differences in speaking volume at times made it challenging to hear the dialogue. When Celine was choking to death extremely convincingly, she drowned out Detective Opal’s speech explaining his motive to kill. Some faulty line delivery generally didn’t affect the impact of the performance too much, although at times a rushed or uncontrolled delivery made the audience work hard to understand what was being conveyed.

Lighthouse seamlessly integrated thoughtfully devised choreography, lighting and performers’ chemistry to create a story full of tension and pay off, playing with the theatre space to immerse the audience in a truly engaging work. While some choices didn’t land, it’s an impressively coordinated production that is rewarding and satisfying to experience.