Beards: A queer cover-up with serious ambition
A comic musical set in the Middle Ages sounds like conversations happening in our own time.
The New Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
In this era, when gay culture has been nudged into the mainstream, the idea of queer people concealing their identity may seem medieval. That also sums up the cleverness of LemonSoap’s comic musical Beards: a jaunt to the Middle Ages, where queer people disappear into sham marriages or risk being lynched. Occasionally, it actually sounds like we’re eavesdropping on conversations from our own time.
In a candlelit chamber of wooden beams, a hooded keyboardist (the composer HK Ní Shioradáin) acts as a narrator, introducing us to “our four fruits.” A shepherd Daryl (Shane Mc Cormick) and his sister Erika (Tierra Porter), both gay and in secret relationships, decide to marry each other’s partners in order to avoid detection. Daryl marries Nelly (Orla Scally), a sweet, doted-on beneficiary of others’ housework, and Erika marries Stace (Sean Landau), a twitchy poet who once had his ankles broken on suspicion of being gay.