Terminus
There’s no way of knowing where Mark O’Rowe’s compelling verse drama
will
lead you as his three protagonists recount their stories in a
tense,
unbroken 100 minutes of unobtrusive rhythm and rhyme.
Isolated
on a bleak
set, bare but for the reflective glass shards which hint at
danger and
other worldliness, A, B and C deliver their monologues
which overlap as
subtly as their lives intertwine on this dark, Dublin
night.
A (Olwen Fouere) recognises the voice of a former pupil,
now pregnant, on
the other end of the phone during her shift at the
Samaritans and foolishly,
determinedly goes in search of her.
Catherine
Walker’s lonely B fends off
the attentions of her best friend’s
lecherous husband on top of a crane and
finds herself rescued by a
soul sold to Satan who’s in pursuit of his
corporeal self.
Secretly
golden-voiced C (a riveting Declan Conlon) has a
penchant for Lockets
and for murder as he despatches his victims both with
casual intent
and by unhappy accident.
Directed by the playwright himself,
it’s a powerful and unusual piece of
theatre which relishes the
evocative potency of language as it moves
seamlessly from the mundane
to the metaphysical, from the comic to the
macabre, from the brutal to
the tender.
4/5
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube Southwark / Waterloo
0207 922 2922
youngvic.org
Till April 16
£17.50
– Louise Kingsley
