Review: Terminus - Peacock Theatre

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DATE : Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:11:13 -0500
Entered in Database : 2007-06-13 19:11:13
length : 2119286
Link to the Show / Show Notes

There's a moment described in Mark O'Rowe's new play Terminus, where a woman has been battered over the head with a chair. As she comes to, she realises that a man is wanking over her comatose body. That comes as close as I can get to describing the experience of watching this production, the moment I realised the opening monologues weren't just prologues before the real drama began, but the whole dramatic structure. Maybe I was in a bad mood. The audience seemed to like it. The cast were brought back for a curtain call when I saw it in preview. There were moments I admired the language. There were moments, too, when I laughed at the regurgitated dark and comical snippets of modern Irish life. But these pleasantries paled when I realised what I was being asked to swallow.It seems that sexual metaphors are called for, because without using them I cannot describe what I felt. This is a script that revels in sex, grotesque violence, a cold-blooded serial murderer separated from his soul on the run, women betrayed by their men, lesbianism, life after death, Faustian pacts and worm-formed demons and angels. They are fantasy themes that any adolescent lad with half an imagination and a creepy obsession with gory fantasy fiction could come up with. The trouble is, Joss Whedon has already claimed this territory in Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, with a wit, panache and a post-modern irony that redeems the terrain from its pubescent self-indulgence, and with which most under-30s (whom I presume are the intended audience for this piece) are familiar. Whedon blazed a trail in creating popular strong female fantasy characters, who are just as violent as men, albeit with matchstick-like figures. But, even acknowledging the fact that few are talented enough to match his genius, it should be interesting to see what happens if such themes are played out in an Irish context. And indeed, in O'Rowe's Ireland, Toto, we're not in Sunnydale anymore. This is ugly, heartless scissor-sister-land, bleak and irredeemable. That in itself is a worthwhile exercise; apply a genre to a culture, and draw your own conclusions. However, for that to come off successfully on stage, the end result has to be dramatic. But, this was a trio of actors taking turns reciting verse, telling us their stories, rooted to the spot. There is not a moment's silence in the 100 or so minutes - we are bombarded with clever rhyming words. The actors do not relate at all to each other onstage, they take turns to speak, segueing into each other's words without giving us a second to assimilate. The characters turn out to be linked to each other in the plot, in a time-warped elliptical way, but there isn't much to connect them otherwise. One character is a psychopathic persecutor, one a hapless victim, one an insanely foolish rescuer. But this drama triangle is curiously undramatic, because all the action is reported, not enacted. The actors are disconnected, from each other and from us. The fragmented narrative is echoed in the bare set, which is simply a framed fourth wall, a mirror that is smashed as a curtain-raiser, with the actors behind it standing up to say their piece and sitting down again. But the mirror might as well have remained intact for all the interest O'Rowe had in empathising with the audience. For this felt like a manifestation of a particular kind of masturbatory male sexuality, with which I am overly familiar; it's hot to watch sometimes, if the guy is fit, trendy and knows how to put on a display. But if he oozes arrogance and seems to think he's God's gift, and only gets off on the concept that someone is watching him, then the appeal is transitory, as appealing as a quick hand-job in the bushes. There might, conceivably, be a frisson of pleasure if he took the time to arouse me, to invite me to collude in his fantasy, to play the game with him. But such a guy doesn't stand a chance to win me over, if I want to be made love to. I've been made love to in the theatre by playwrights, male and female. I've been treated to foreplay, teasing, encouragement; I've been cajoled and inveigled and persuaded to care, to relax, to trust. Open wide, this will only hurt a little. I've been tickled and stroked and cuddled, and squeezed so tight I could hardly breathe. And I have been right royally fucked in the theatre, in violent, sexual plays like Matt Harris' Jack the Lad and Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking. And if the rhythm is right, the setting is right, the chemistry is right, then actors and audience come together in a climax of emotional impact - whether that be pain, tears, love, shock, horror, laughter or joy. Perhaps, not for the first time, I am asking too much. I did not feel that the production was even attempting to engage my emotions, to relate to me as an equal, although the individual actors tried their best, isolated in their cold circles of light. I felt that I was supposed to be an admirer of his cocky, manipulative, wordy prowess. This is perhaps why I have reacted so negatively. Or, at least, if there was supposed to be pleasure in being dominated and brutalised by a production, then please gain my trust first, and then do my head in. That's informed consent. The programme is the published script, and on perusing it now, it actually reads very well. It should, therefore, be produced on the radio. Eileen Walsh, through sheer force of will, managed to get me to care about her character, and her commitment to tell the story of falling for her grotesque demon lover was impressive. And when Andrea Irvine described her gruesome murderous moment, the audience squirmed and groaned. But if O'Rowe (as both writer and director) was interested in alluding to his motives for making his actors tell such shocking tales of degradation, abuse and butchery, he failed to communicate it to me. Context is all. Is this what's fashionable now in Irish theatre? A meretricious showy sub-Tarantino Dub loquaciousness? Is psychology, by which I mean the curiosity about human motivation, passé? As the dynamic Aidan Kelly reaches the end of his tale, and tells us about his character's eviscerating descent to oblivion, we hear nothing sensible about how he came to live a life of such psychotic depravity. He sings an absurd song - correction, he describes himself singing an absurd song. It made the audience laugh. Well, that's alright then. I am a firm believer in the use of theatre as a safe space for us to explore our shadow. Sure, place as much base immoral and abusive behaviour as can be tolerated by an audience onstage, as long as we are informed of the motives, the agonies, the cruelties, the values, the choices behind it, as long as it is interrogated dramatically, there is light and shade. That way, we can both be shocked by the dark material, and yet also shiver in recognition, and in that catharsis we advance our knowledge of the human condition a millimeter or two. But without that emotional connection to the audience, the violence and the sex and the satanic shenanigans become gratuitous and pornographic. Maybe if I liked porn I'd have liked this show. But I doubt it.