Terminus

Mark O’Rowe is an extraordinarily creative and capricious playwright who has churned out consistently brilliant, wayward variations on the monologue theme. Since bringing the art into new territory with his multiple award-winning Howie the Rookie in 1999, he has built up a robust reputation as the British Isles' hardest hitting pulp poet. And this year’s devilishly devious Terminus, a triple monologue in free rhyme, is nothing short of a feverishly exciting experience.

Something sinister stirs in the shadows of Dublin’s docklands, an unnameable presence that brings three lives into collision on one fateful night. The first is a schoolteacher who takes it upon herself to fix whatever it is that’s troubling a downcast pupil of hers, and finds herself careering down a rabbit hole of dark secrets and malignant pacts. The second leaves home that evening to escape her life’s punishing monotony, and fights it by climbing a crane, lovesick and intrepid. The third gets lucky, takes home a girl, and in the process crosses a group of street urchins who have something of an appetite for excitement.

Then begins the infernal comedy: with orchestral grandeur the treble destinies explode into a pandemonium of offbeat encounters and chaotic hoo-has that can only be the machinations of the Devil himself. Three experienced, celebrated actors bring a palpably human touch to this insane, screwball tragicomedy, creating a classy and intelligent burlesque romp. A refined, expressionistic set design whets the cutting-edge script and completes a product that will shock, exhilarate, and intoxicate.