Terminus is a play for three actors in rhyming couplets. Not the easiest form, nowadays at least, for dramatist or actors (or indeed, sometimes, audience). Mark O'Rowe takes few prisoners as his text steps solidly forward toward its end. The triple monologue, meshing together the tales told by the three actors, is a device used by several playwrights since Brian Friel's Faith Healer first appeared.

Here, two women suffer loneliness separately and the results of trying to avoid it. Meanwhile, a serial killer struggles to avoid the law and retribution. Although there's quite a bit of magic realism whizzing about, the play feels tied to a particular sensibility, from which this reviewer hoped it might be released. No such luck, however, as O'Rowe's characters stumbled toward their pre-ordained end.

There's quite a bit of theology lurking in the sub-text of Terminus, no bad thing in itself, but difficult to make convincing and relevant in our secularised times. Some of O'Rowe's demonology (yes, there is one, of sorts at least) seems to owe more than a little to that of Philip Pullman, although neither writer may take that as any sort of compliment.

Much of the language does work, however, although in the performance seen, the actors had occasional difficulty with it. There is, to be fair, a great deal to remember, and in the right order. Theirs is undoubtedly a particularly difficult task, which they carry out with faithfulness to both text and characterisation, albeit with some slight stumbles.

They also make maximum use of minimal staging, breathing life into open space. There's such talent and enthusiasm obvious here that one wishes it could have been focused elsewhere. Howie the Rookie marked O'Rowe as a chronicler of life and time in contemporary Ireland. Here it feels as if a step backward has been taken, into an Ireland which no longer really exists, or no longer deserves the oxygen tent it feels has been provided here.

Times: Aug 3-16, times vary (see Fringe Programme)

Copyright Bill Dunlop August 2008

Published on EdinburghGuide.com August 2008