“Terminus”, in modern day usage, can imply either a starting or a finishing point along a fixed route. In that sense, it has a circular aspect to it, i.e. each ending becomes a beginning. However, the term originally meant a boundary stone – a demarcation point where the remains of a sacrificial lamb would be buried in the ground and a marker placed on top. As it happens, both of these ways of understanding the word can be found in this dark and outlandishly contrived drama from Irish playwright and director Mark O’Rowe.
Told by way of three interlocking monologues, the play takes place over the course of a single night in Dublin city. The three plainly-dressed actors remain in the same position throughout, lit only by horizontally-placed spotlights when speaking, and without any interaction with each other. Their stories are then candidly related to the audience by way of (frequently ribald) rhyming couplets, delivered in ordinary everyday accents. They could easily be personal anecdotes casually told to you by a chance acquaintance in a bar. Except that no one who is sound of mind will ever tell you stories quite like these!
At the heart of the play is the theme of abject loneliness. All three characters make reckless but deliberate decisions in the face of it. The older woman (Andrea Irvine) beds a man that she should have stayed clear of. The younger one (Kate Brennan) follows a stranger somewhere that she should not have gone. The male character (Karl Shiels) strikes a bargain without reading the fine print. In doing so, they each set in motion a cascade of increasingly shocking and preposterous events that will have grave consequences both for themselves and for others.
Despite the menace, despair, absurdity, and graphic violence that are their chief constituent parts, O’Rowe succeeds in concluding each tale of woe with elements of both poetic justice and unconventional bliss. Equally, levity is to be found in the most disturbing of places, as exemplified by several choked-off guffaws from the audience. Moreover, there is a fine and natural lyricism to O’Rowe’s writing, which the cast conveys with real assurance here.
On the whole, Terminus could be described as raw slices of Dublin life put in a blender with American Psycho, The Divine Comedy, and Faust. If that sounds mind-boggling to you, then you would be right. An impressive and memorable show, in all.
Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: Andrea Irvine, Karl Shiels, Kate Brennan, Mark O'Rowe, Terminus
