[NEohioPAL] Review of "Terminus" at convergence-continuum

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

All roads lead to staggering stories in con-con's 'Terminus'

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

 

Contemporary Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe wrote "Terminus" in his spare time.  And it shows.

 

O'Rowe was working on an uninspiring screenplay and in need of a distraction when, according to an interview he gave to the New York Times, he "wrote a couple lines.  There was some rhyming going on.  So I thought, 'O.K., lets keep it up.'"

 

"Terminus," which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2007 and is currently on stage at convergence-continuum in Cleveland's Tremont district, maintains the tell-tale signs of its haphazard origins.

 

The play unfolds as if it was conceived in piecemeal stream-of-consciousness.   It is comprised of three seemingly unrelated monologues that radically shift in tone and temperament.  They are spoken intermittently by three unnamed characters that never interact or share a single word:  One is a mother seeking atonement; another is a lonely young woman looking for love; and the third is a serial killer who has quite literally sold his soul to the Devil.    

 

The brogue-imbued words that fill this 105-minute, one-act play have retained the impulsivity with which they were written.  They flow and sometimes spew without a filter and fluctuate between rhyming poetry, muscular prose and guttural profanity.  They are filled with flights of fantasy and humor when not being astoundingly realistic. 

 

But when the worlds revealed in these monologues begin to overlap and the characters' paths converge, the method in the madness of their construction and the brilliance in the writing come into clear and startling focus.  



For more of this review, go to:  http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_f054b33e-729d-11e4-80a2-5b567c49aef5.html
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