Photo Courtesy of Theatre Gigante
Tori Watson
Don’t spoil the ending! Don’t reveal the twist(s)! Pre-internet filmmakers sometimes begged their audience not to tell. Alfred Hitchcock did that with Blackmail, Neil Jordan with The Crying Game.
Theatre Gigante’s Mark Anderson and Isabelle Kralj have asked me not to say too much about their new production, Terminus. Of course, devotees of Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe will already know how the story goes. And it’s not the first time in town for Terminus. Gigante gave the play its Milwaukee premiere 10 year ago.
So, if you were at that performance, scroll to the bottom for dates and location. If you weren’t there 10 years ago, seeing Terminus unfold for the first time will explain the desire by Gigante’s co-artistic directors to let their audience feel the keen sensation of surprise.
This much can be said. Terminus has a cast of three unnamed characters. We’ll identify them as a Woman Looking for Atonement (Kralj), a Woman Looking for Love (Tori Watson) and a Man who Sold his Soul (Don Russsell). They are on stage together without interacting. There is no action, only three separate monologues as each tells his/her story. Spoiler alert: their stories eventually intersect.
Anderson and Kralj have expunged O’Rowe’s occasional Irish references. The three characters “could be anybody, in any place, at any time,” Kralj says. The challenge for the actors is to feel the pain, the experience of their monologues relayed in language at once coarse yet poetically elevated. O’Rowe wrote Terminus in verse, “not iambic pentameter,” Anderson explains, “but in rhymes that sometimes don’t rhyme—a sound in a word will match the sound in another word” in rhythms that become almost musical.
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So what’s it all about? According to Kralj, O’Rowe is “making a statement on the ugliness in our world, but within that ugliness is always a glimmer of life, a desperate need for a good outcome. All three characters are searching for love and connection.”
Jarring in its juxtapositions, Terminus reveals the complexity of three humans flawed and betrayed by their own miscomprehension. Directed by Michael Stebbins, Terminus will be performed February 27, March 1-2 and March 7-9 at Kenilworth 508 Theatre, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For tickets, visit giganteterminus.eventbrite.com.
