Mark O'Rowe's, Terminus: Few writers can make an audience visibly flinch from the force of their words. When, in a monologue play, those words form everything - its successive speakers establishing a universe, the people who inhabit it and the laws that govern it within our imagination - one wonders not what they are flinching from, but where they are flinching to: there is no escape from the mind's eye.
In Mark O'Rowe's thrillingly conceived Terminusan unreal world is grafted upon our own, constructed so vividly and told with such sly conviction that it attains a distinct shape. The "sullied magnificence" of Dublin becomes the canvas for three entwining narratives: a woman's quest for redemption; a doomed life saved by less-than-divine intervention; a supernaturally-inclined killer's virtuoso eviscerations.
There is something enjoyably preposterous about Terminus, which is composed entirely in verse and elevates O'Rowe's previous evocations of gruesome violence and grim humour to the level of a fabulous epic. Initially that poetry is distracting, when we meet Andrea Irvine's phoneline counsellor on a violent mission - a bad Samaritan, if you will. The verse rides on an intricate pattern of internal rhymes that can twist and surge and flow, but when the rhymes are stressed, as Irvine tends to deliver them, the story snags.
The extraordinary Eileen Walsh (right) - whose performance would be reason enough to see this production - best understands when words should float and when they must bite. She also has the clearest command of character: a profoundly lonely young woman who can barely summon the will to shrug, she is rescued from certain death by a passing demon (who may not be a looker, but has defied heaven for her) and thus treated to the play's most exhilarating plot thread and set up with a demigod.
He is the better devil to know, it seems, as Aidan Kelly's charismatic serial killer is a nasty piece of work. Having received the short end of the small print in a music deal with Satan, he has two compulsions: to murder women, and consume a pathological amount of Honey and Lemon Lockets, which do little to decongest his evil.
How these narratives combine and connect is hilarious, startling, surprisingly touching and enormously satisfying, in the same way that, theatrically, the play is not. Jon Bausor's design - framed by the smashed remnants of a gilt-edged mirror - and Philip Gladwell's oblique lights suggest that, as writer and director, O'Rowe wants our attentions elsewhere.
"Less of this observation; acceleration's what we need," says the magnificent Kelly at one point. But if Terminus itself is a thrill ride, it also presents a recognisable Dublin, delighting in junk (both the culture and the food), stalked by menacing youths and moral quandaries, a teeming city haunted by loneliness.
If there is any juice left in the monologue play, it must be as the dramatic form of isolation; a pain that motivates each character. Terminusis a fantastic piece of writing, O'Rowe's best so far, because it recognises that this fractured Ireland needs a new mythology, its own daring and heart-thumping epic, to bind us together in story.
Terminus, Peacock, Dublin, Runs until July 7.
Reviewed by Peter Crawley
Tritschler, Yang
An out-of-the-ordinary combination of voice and instrument - courtesy of tenor Robin Tritschler and guitarist XueFei Yang - took this year's Music in Great Irish Houses festival on a fascinating and enjoyable departure from the beaten track of familiar repertoire.
Chief among the rarities on offer were Britten's Songs from the Chinese Op 58 and Dominick Argento's Letters from Composers (1968).
Their unlikely texts - arid English renderings of ancient Chinese poetry, and extracts from the more mundane correspondence of Bach, Mozart, et al - proved catalysts for two intriguing and colourful song cycles.
Giving a gentle taste of Bellini-like melody were the Sei cavatine Op 39 by Mauro Giuliani, while arrangements of three Irish songs by the contemporary guitarist Jan Zácek blended local interest with a continental cafe style.
Tritschler performed these unusual selections with keen and involving advocacy, finding an authentically lush sotto voce in the Britten, and elevating Giuliani's humble bel canto studies to near-opera.
An ill-advised modulation in the final verse of The Minstrel Boyseemed to take things a little too high for comfort, but Argento's setting of an angry letter from Puccini unleashed the full ringing eclat of Robin Tritschler's powerful upper register.
Yang, who at 30 has just released a solo album on EMI Classics, is one of the first international success stories of the Chinese conservatory system. As she backed Tritschler, it was hard for the powerful individualism of her musical personality not to assert itself from time to time. But at the extrovert peaks of the 20th-century items, this had positive effects.
In three solos - Albéniz's Asturias, Mangoré's Un sueño en la floresta, and Rodriguez's tango La cumparsita - her impeccable and ultra-rapid passage playing, hypnotic tremolos and infectious rhythms gripped the audience.
Music in Great Irish Houses Festival ends tonight, Russborough House, Blessington.
Reviewed by Andrew Johnstone
