Beachy Head by Analogue
Friday 4 March, Stag Theatre

“There are around 6.8 billion people on the planet and approximately 57 million of us will die each year- one in every 9,000 of these deaths is a suicide”.

It is a sombre start to the production, as the character of the Pathologist reads out the facts and figures that introduces the dark subject matter at the heart of Analogue’s production. A month on from Stephen’s suicide, his wife Amy is still coming to terms with his death; something that seemed completely out of the blue. Plagued with memories of her recently deceased husband, Amy is desperate to find out what pushed him to the edge. She meets Matt and Joe, two aspiring film makers who propose to document her experience as a means to help her come to terms with her loss; but they keep from her their true motivation and the blurred footage of Stephen jumping from the cliffs that they recorded by chance. They also interview a Pathologist, who provides insight into autopsies and the cold, graphic detail of what happens to a body that has fallen from a cliff.

As the play and the documentary take shape, the lack of answers found in the flashbacks as to why Stephen jumped instead reveal the consequences of his suicide. The film makers wrestle with their conscience and when Amy finally (and angrily) discovers the footage, it still doesn’t give her the answers she craves. We share her frustration, and for some, the lack of story - in favour of focus on the emotional experience of those caught up in, and affected by suicide - was not as satisfying. Like Amy, many wanted more answers, when the production’s main point was to show that whilst we all crave a ‘romantic story’ the reality is brutally bare.

It was a visually impressive production, creating some magical technical and theatrical tricks, live video streaming, rotating sets and tight scene changes. At one stage we see a woman, who seems to be lying on an autopsy table and the next moment it changes into the same woman, but she is standing on the edge of a cliff. The play was full of sleight of hand and impressive use of sound, lighting and multimedia, giving it a filmic quality and heightening the sense of illusion. The subtlety, precision and careful detail placed into the stage picture created moments of genuine tension and cinematic focus.

Although the two film makers, Joe (Matt Tait) and Matt (Neil Craig) sometimes seemed quite sketchy, they were successfully used for comic relief (for example when a more touching soundtrack is asked to be played and Matt puts on Careless Whisper by George Michael) and they did include some moments of moral complexity and emotional depth. The character of Amy (played by Katie Lightfoot), was very moving and effective as the grieving widow left pained and confused by her husband’s death.

One drawback of the production was the anti-climax when Amy finally views the footage, which is staged live. Her line “He just jumped…” sums up the quite un-dramatic moment of Stephen literally just jumping off the ‘suggested cliff’. Although this is the point the production is trying to make, the content was to some extent at odds with the (lack of) drama; felt even more so after the anticipation and build up from such a technically impressive production.
However, despite its loose storyline and anti-climatic ending, overall Beachy Head was a hard hitting, visceral production with moments of very clever staging.

Jake Westhead