Natasha Boeckmann, Amanda Marasch, and Rachel Mock Photo by Claudia Hershner

It seems that the surviving insects have developed an appetite for dead human flesh. It's a strange turn of events for a play that begins with what feels like an ecological warning sign. In playwright Douglas's cynical hands, the storytelling becomes darkly, gruesomely comic and definitely morally complex. Gwen (Amanda Marasch), the lab's insecure manager who's more obsessed with funding to keep everything operating than with the larger need to build on present research, does not welcome the news of the insects' evolution, while the lab assistants are weirdly fascinated.

Mock and Boeckmann offer two distinct perspectives on how scientists face challenges. Mock's Zora is more pragmatic and driven, while Boeckmann's Pilar is rooted in emotion–she hums and sings as she tends to the hives. Their differences, delivered at high speed and sometimes resorting to overlapping dialogue, represent meaningful, powerfully felt dramatic implications of the challenges they face.

Anna Hazard portrays a series of four terminal patients who volunteer to participate in Zora's experimentation. Her first appearance, as Cece, offers an extended existential monologue about facing death and how it might be given meaning. She subsequently portrays three other women whose grim demises are presented as shadows behind a backlit sheet. Adding to the foreboding atmosphere, the sounds of buzzing bees are a constant undertone to the 80-minute production, sometimes more insistent but always present.

Staged with sensitivity and a hurtling momentum by director Chad Brinkman, this is a disturbing cautionary tale about how far scientists might consider going to address a serious ecological challenge. The women's intentions in the pursuit of knowledge comes at a serious and truly questionable ethical price. The story steamrolls toward a tough conclusion when it takes a more personal turn with Pilar.

Brinkman also designed the production's set and lighting. Falcon's stage is small, but the sterile lab design has walls with subtle honeycomb patterns that offer a meaningful setting for the story. The use of the backlit sheet is a simple solution to depicting the show's most intense moments. The persistent buzzing soundtrack (Ted Weil and Samantha Joy Weil are the sound designers) supports a subconscious, foreboding awareness of a story that's fraught and challenging.

Falcon Theatre gravitates to scripts that wrestle with complex issues, and this production of The Apiary is a fine example of that constant intention. On opening night, Producing Artistic Director Ted Weil announced the shows he's selected for the 2026-2027 season, kicking off in mid-September with Jonathan Spector's Eureka Day, winner of the 2025 Tony Award for best revival of a play. The full season of five productions (including a double-bill early in 2027) will feature plays by Lucy Kirkwood and Jen Silverman among other important contemporary playwrights. The shows are described on Falcon's website.

The Apiary runs through May 16, 2026, at Falcon Theatre, at 636 Monmouth Street, Newport KY. For tickets and information, please visit falcontheater.net or call 513-479-6783.