Stage Review - Beginning (Burien Actors Theatre)
Stage Review - Beginning
Presented By: Burien Actors Theatre - Burien, WA
Show Run: February 14 - March 09, 2025
Date Reviewed: Saturday, March 01, 2025
Run Time: 90 minutes (with no intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
I’m extremely fond of shows that delve into the complexities of human relationships, how we navigate our individual social awkwardness or varying degrees of self-confidence to come together in the building of a new partnership, how we grow together through shared experience, compromise, and understanding, and how we succeed, and sometimes fail, in navigating social pressures, work, family, children, and each other in hopes that we can grow old together. English playwright David Eldridge has dedicated a trilogy of plays to this exact topic, the first of which is currently running on stage at the Kennedy Catholic High School Theatre through March 9, in a show produced by Burien Actors Theatre. Simply titled Beginning, the play takes place in the London flat of Laura immediately following her housewarming party, and centers on the host and the last remaining guest, Danny, as they navigate the genesis of their own relationship, taking a spark and trying to turn it into some sort of flame. The Burien Actors Theatre production represents the US premiere of Beginning, it’s directed by Jasmine Lomax and features Lucy Pearce as Laura and Gerald Germajesty Price as Danny. It’s a wonderful production, well paced, intimately presented, and told with a humanity that brings the audience into the lives of these two characters as they continuously push each other apart before coming back together in a night of vulnerability, sharing gossip, breaking down personal barriers, ulterior motives, and overcoming past heartbreaks. So good is the play and the presentation, I came away from Saturday’s performance intrigued enough to want to see Eldridge’s follow-up to this 2017 play, 2022’s Middle, and the trilogy’s finale, End, premiering in England later this year.
As the play starts, the audience is placed right in Laura’s flat, immediately after her housewarming party. Laura is single, in her mid-30s, and with no immediate family. Throughout the party, she had her eye on Danny, a bit older than Laura and a friend of mutual friend Keith, who the pair spend the first part of the play gossiping about, Keith acting as the icebreaker in this budding relationship. It seems as though Laura wasn’t the only one with her eyes on a partygoer, Danny, for his part, had his eyes on Laura as well, there was definitely a mutual attraction. And while immediately after the party, when the two find themselves alone in her flat, it seems like their attraction is already manifest and they’re about to kiss, when Danny steps away in nervousness it begins a series of conversations that takes the pair through an obstacle course of pretense and hidden intentions, of soul baring confessions and post traumatic recollections, and finally, after each has laid themselves bare, of unbridled honesty.
The setting for Beginning, Laura’s flat, is extremely well done. Designed by Maggie Larrick, and dressed by Cyndi Baumgardner, the flat looks functional, it’s well laid out, nicely appointed, and, quite frankly, a mess. With half empty wine bottles, empty beer cans, bottles of scotch at least seemingly randomly scattered around the room, it looks like the morning after a frat party. But nothing is random, the props and various pieces are all used throughout the piece at times, Laura always has a glass of wine in her hand, Danny takes a swig (or 5) of scotch to calm his nerves, and pieces on the display unit shelves are picked up and handled. Laura makes fish finger sandwiches in her oven, Danny grabs a bottle of wine from the fridge, there’s nothing that’s not purposeful on this set, and Rob Falk’s lighting adds to the mood of the production, subtly dimming and brightening to inform the mood of each part of the conversation.
These are conversations that run the gamut, initially lighthearted about mutual friend, well Danny’s friend and Laura’s client, Keith, then turning to politics and family, but when Laura asks Danny about his personal life, specifically when his father, who left when Danny was 7, comes up, or when he talks about his daughter from his first wife, a daughter he never sees, Danny turns instantly solemn. Otherwise, Danny is extremely nervous, not sure how to handle a situation in which a woman is showing the kind of interest in him that Laura is, and even tells her that he wishes he would have found her online, as he’s much more comfortable in those more impersonal situations. And when faced with a potential relationship, the thought of a repeat of his first marriage is visibly heartbreaking to him. Playing this character requires someone who can manage each of these emotions, the nervousness that resembles a middle school boy with a crush, the heart wrenching sadness in reminiscing about memories with the daughter he hasn’t seen in years, or the self-protecting fear of repeating a previous mistake. Gerald’s strength in this role is in this agility, in his ability not just to portray all of these aspects of Danny, but to genuinely feel these emotions, to react in a way that is so natural when the discussion turns to a trigger point for him. His character has so much deep emotion, so much trauma from past relationships, as a child and as an adult, that informs his behavior toward Laura’s advances, it requires Gerald to dig deep and it’s such an impressive piece of acting.
On the other side is Lucy Pearce and her just remarkable performance as Laura. Laura is determined, she’s got an agenda and she intends to make it happen. As someone with no living family, and whose biological clock is ticking, she’s made some decisions about what she wants in life, and she has decided that she’d like Danny to be a part of those plans, in some way or another. Despite his nervousness, she persists, and Lucy plays her impeccably. Her character isn’t just one dimensional, though, and one of the strengths of Lucy’s performance, among many, is her expressiveness, especially through her eyes. She’s flirty, empathetic, regretful, and she can make a scene with just a look. From her own emotional perspective, Lucy’s Laura is also very good in supporting Danny when he falls into a depressive state in their conversation, and even better when she takes a risk by opening up about her own life and her past. Impressive even more is Lucy’s accent in this role, it’s such a wonderful aspect to her portrayal of Laura, it’s consistent, through all of her emotional ups and downs, and throughout the entire performance. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, credit again goes to dialect coach Marianna de Fazio in addition to both members of this cast for developing these excellent accents and for performing them so well.
While each actor performs superbly from an individual perspective, it’s their work together that makes Beginning work. In order to sell a relationship on stage to an audience, the actors must have chemistry, which Lucy and Gerald do, they must be well prepared and deliver their lines with confidence and in a way that feels natural, which, again, they do, and the play must run at a pace that keeps the audience engaged while building its interest as the play progresses. Jasmine, along with her creative team, has done a nice job preparing the actors and creating movement on stage that drives the pace of the show and keeps it moving nicely. Finally, Lucy and Gerard are very good in bringing out the humor in the show, from Danny’s nervousness, which results in an exploding beer can and a broken cork in a bottle, or humor generated from the sexual tension between the pair, humor that is nicely mixed in with the humanity of this relationship story. It’s nicely performed in all aspects.
David Eldridge’s Beginning, the first in a trilogy of plays that focus on the stages of human relationships, presents the story of Laura and Danny, who meet at the close of Laura’s housewarming party. This intimate story of two strangers navigating the hurdles of a budding friendship while carrying the baggage of their respective pasts and dealing with ulterior motives is about taking risks, and the courage to lay yourself bare to someone new in order to establish trust. Performed beautifully by Lucy Pearce and Gerald Germajesty Price, the Burien Actors Theatre production of Beginning will draw you into this pair’s story, and make you fall in love with them, as much as you hope they fall in love with each other.
Beginning, produced by Burien Actors Theatre, runs on stage at the Kennedy Catholic High School Theatre in Burien through March 9. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://battheatre.org/.
Photo credit: Michael Brunk
