Supernatural Drama in an Intimate Studio Setting

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Photo by Tanya D Hein

The profoundly human drama of supernatural fantasy horror is rarely explored on the live stage. Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus is executed so brilliantly that it makes one wonder why. The stories of a serial murderer, a mother, a girl and her guardian demon resonate through three beautifully lyrical rotating monologues that dance elegantly across the imagination. Running through May 16, Theatre Gigante’s production smartly summons three intertwined stories to an intimate, emotionally vivid studio theater environment.

With an approach that respects the gritty brutality of the prose, Isabelle Kralj plays a mother. She’s a volunteer for a crisis line battling a darkness deep within her. Hers is the most earthbound of the stories. Megan Kaminsky does exhilarating things with some of the more fantastic elements of the script in the role of a young woman who is having one of the worst days imaginable. It starts out with a splattered shepherd’s pie on a kitchen floor and gets considerably worse from there. Tom Reed rounds out the trio in the role of a serial murderer who has sold his soul for the gift of a power he is largely unable to use. Reed is gracefully cool and poised as a man who thinks little of any human life, including his own.

Supernatural horror is something so commonly found in lifeless big-budget form on big screens in multiplexes all over the country. The emotionality of these stories is so often washed out with surgical precision in editing, scoring and expensive special effects. With hearts and voices breathing stories into the darkness, Theatre Gigante manages on a whisper-thin budget what no film ever could.

Through May 16 at Kenilworth Studio 508 Theater on 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For tickets, call 800-838-3006 or visit giganteterminus.brownpapertickets.com.