Review: ‘Bacon’ treads the line between love and abuse for teenage boys in a Rogue Machine powerhouse

Acting doesn’t get more combustible than in Rogue Machine Theatre’s explosive production of “Bacon,” performed upstairs at the Matrix Theatre on the inescapably intimate Henry Murray Stage.

When you head back downstairs at the end of this two-hander by British playwright Sophie Swithinbank, you might need a moment to gather yourself. The play, which explores masculinity, bullying, sexuality, internalized homophobia and violence, chronicles the abusive relationship between two wounded adolescent boys who are struggling to understand the adults they’re becoming.

It’s also, in a way, a love story. A destructive one that neither is equipped to handle.

Mark (Wesley Guimarães) is a shy and polite newcomer to St. Michael’s School. Self-conscious and friendless, he’s anxious not to attract the kind of attention that has clearly made him a target of bullying in the past. Darren (Jack Lancaster), who lives with his volatile father in less middle-class circumstances than Mark, is a troublemaker at the school, a regular in detention who smokes where he shouldn’t, takes what doesn’t belong to him and carries a knife to settle disputes.

The play, set in London, moves back and forth between two time periods. When “Bacon” begins, Mark is working at a café, hiding out from his life in what will eventually be revealed to be a post-traumatic limbo. Darren’s entrance into the café prompts Mark to tell his story — their story, actually, an entwined set of narratives that the two characters will take turns delivering.

The scene changes to four years earlier, when Mark and Darren meet at St. Michael’s School. They are drawn to each other like predator to prey. Darren, a menacing presence, instantly sizes up Mark, who wears his heart on his neatly pressed sleeve. Their backgrounds and temperaments could hardly be more different, yet both sense in each other a missing piece.

Neglected and roiling with rage, Darren needs to be loved but can’t face his own vulnerability. Mark, who longs to give comfort, doesn’t have the self-esteem to protect himself from cruelty when it’s mixed up with the promise of connection.

Mark is taller and brighter than Darren but infinitely more docile and far less street-smart. There’s no question who’s in control.

Guimarães’ reveals Mark’s limits — there are certain things he will not tolerate. But the character’s terror of social isolation keeps the door open to a friendship that can resemble a hostage situation. Early on, Darren grabs Mark’s phone and refuses to give it back, establishing the pattern of violation that Mark rejects but cannot seem to escape. Later, when Darren shows up at Mark’s home, the unexpected social call is laden with lethal suspense.

Lancaster’s Darren is like a coiled snake, ready to spring at the most unexpected moments. As Mark and Darren spend more time alone together, the tension, both sexual and otherwise, rises exponentially. Cut off from the world, they tentatively explore their mutual curiosities. But these private moments create a backlash in Darren that is terrifying to witness. The brutality of his upbringing has made him dangerous. The sight of weakness, a reminder of what he’s covering up, compels him to pounce.

Jack Lancaster and Wesley Guimarães in the West Coast premiere of “Bacon” at Rogue Machine

(Jeff Lorch)

Swithinbank probes deep beyond the topical surface of her drama. “Bacon” defies category. It deals with school bullying but doesn’t takes refuge in social-issue talking points. This sharply psychological work uses the two-character format to dramatize a dance of fractured identities.

The production, directed by Michael Matthews, concentrates intensely on the interplay between Guimarães and Lancaster. The actors, while adopting the English accents of their characters, bring their own individualities to the roles. “Bacon” is the kind of play that will transform through the particularities of its performers.

Unfolding in the tight quarters of the Henry Murray Stage, the actors rearrange a few minimal set pieces to shift the abstract locale from school to home to work and beyond. (Stephen Gifford’s production design understands the theatricality of the play and keeps the focus squarely on the actors.)

“Bacon” grapples with trauma — and doesn’t flinch from what it uncovers. Guimarães and Lancaster give themselves fearlessly over to a story that is extreme but in a way that is true to the extremity of adolescence.

The production, another Rogue Machine powerhouse in a compressed package, is one of the most intense outings I’ve had in the theater in some time. Acting, playwriting, directing and producing combine into unmissable theater, an experience that could happen nowhere else but the live stage.