Terminus
Terminus By Mark O’Rowe
Directed by Mary Beth Spurlock
Additional Direction by John DiDonna, Kevin G. Becker, and Seth Kubersky
With Kelly Kilgore, Sarah-Lee Dobbs, and Tommy Liles
DiDonna Productions/The Empty Spaces Theatre Co(llaboration)
Lowndes Shakespeare Center, Loch Haven Park, Florida</strong>
As Irish ghost stories go, this one was dark and somewhat hard to hear. On stage we have three unnamed people, each with a series of interlocking monologs. Sara-Lee Dobbs used to teach but now she helps at a suicide hotline, Kelly Kilgore dodges the romantic bullets of her best friend’s husband, and Tommy Liles likes to take girls home, make love to them, and then remove their innards. Other than, he’s nice looking chap. A phone call sets us in motion; one of Dobbs’ ex-students is 4 weeks from a baby and wants to kill it and herself. Dobbs sets out to find her and meets her hooligan lesbian lover then stalks the lover and her friends in an evening of wilding. Dobbs may not look it, but she can wield a mean cudgel. Kilgore foolishly goes out on a date with her friends, after last call they decide to climb a construction crane as a thrill but an attempted rape leads to a successful fall. She meets someone else’s demon while Liles steal a truck and brings everything back to closure in high speed chase. I’m just hitting the high points here, there’s a lot of plot under the management of a lot of directors in this show.
The cleverly constructed script is performed in the fabled Patron’s Room; it’s the one space in town that competes with the Carr for awkward acoustics. The room is semi dark with bright spot lights aimed at the audience, it’s a challenge to follow the actors as they dart and dash through the space. It’s deeply disturbing with an occasion bit of black humor concealed under a thick brogue that makes the story a challenge to follow. Liles is the most straight forward and least likeable, while Dobbs takes the most concentration as it’s not always clear who she’s referring to in her words. Kilgore follows the happiest path even if it doesn’t seem that way at first; she gets a second chance at a lot of things. “Terminus” is two hours with no intermission and no respite from the incipient violence and desolation. It’s not exactly horror, but it is gripping and once you are through the first round of monologs, it’s not one you can let go of easily.
For more information on Empty Spaces Theater Company, visit http://www.emptyspacestheatre.org
