Review: Terminus

Maev Beaty (photo credit: Josie Di Luzio)

Apparitions at the Royal Alex
by Jason Booker

Outside the March’s production of Terminus transforms into a ghost story told round the campfire.  Staged with the audience seated on the deck of the Royal Alexandra Theatre, the show is a wall of text that awakens and arouses audience members, entertaining them with gruesome characters, unnerving plotting and insinuating imagery. 

With a strong concept from director Mitchell Cushman, Terminus is expertly staged and wonderfully unique.  Cushman takes up the challenge of Mark O’Rowe’s script, maintaining that storytelling comes first, though this tale is anything but family-friendly.  Audience members are pelted with crude but real language and situations that are fanciful but graphic, like the one involving entrails.  The unflinching dialogue, written in a rap prose that rhymes but isn’t precise or metered, slams into the audience’s ear, particularly because of the Irish accents the actors acquire for the show.  There are moments when the barrage of language is almost more pleasant to hear than the specific words – these rhythms are so lyrical yet tricky to deliver and ultimately profound.  The art isn’t always the tale being told (so often the case with ghost stories) but in the method of delivery – and this one is a hit.

theatres are rumoured to have apparitions that inhabit them; this production takes that assumption and screeches along with it

The light at the base of the bleachers, which constantly and eerily glows across the performers in their limited playing space, creates shadows that dance across the theatre, flickering as if around a bonfire.  These ethereal figures, created by the constantly moving cast, illuminate the theatre: a place of history built for people, but presently empty.  This is a place where audiences come to hear a good yarn.  Often theatres are rumoured to have apparitions that inhabit them; this production takes that assumption and screeches along with it, right up to the final moment, which completely justifies this unorthodox staging.

Aside from minor quibbles, like wishing there was more transitional use of the dark and throbbing soundscape that draws the audience into the space, Terminus fires on all levels, including a stunningly simple set that focuses all of the attention on the actors.

The performances of these unlikeable characters are subtle but beautiful.  While the story is the focus of the show, without these actors, Terminus would fall flat.

Maev Beaty as A is fantastic.  Starting onstage, she grabs the audience by the lapels with her opening text and refuses to let go, reeling the audience in.  Based on this performance, Beaty becomes part of the ensemble while still standing out as the strongest and most emotive of the three players.

B, Ava Jane Markus, doesn’t quite have a handle on the rhythms of this text.  She tries but doesn’t always manage to find the right moments to take a breath or become unrelenting with her speech.  She nearly succeeds but it doesn’t feel as natural with Markus as with her castmates.  However, as the emotional core of the story, the spectre that takes the audience on this wild ride, she also uses her physicality the best, in this somewhat static staging.

The sole male of the cast, Adam Kenneth Wilson, can be tricky to hear sometimes as he has chosen to be quiet to emphasize the creepiness of his character.  Occasionally he makes C even more callous than the script intended – which can be both good and bad, since scares are the centre of every ghost story, but a human character is often more enjoyable to watch.

In the show’s latest venue, two hundred seats have been set up, staring out into the often-darkened auditorium.  Some of the sightlines from the makeshift seating seem questionable though and, with two hundred seats, how intimate is the show, following a brief festival run with thirty seats per performance?

Even at a preview, it’s easy to tell that this otherworldly show must be experienced.

Terminus continues to December 9 to December 16