Then Like Gigli, Now Like Bette: The Grotesque and the Sublime in Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus

Abstract

Mark O’Rowe’s play Terminus (2007) represents a somewhat extreme case of a recent text which, in a reflection of the construction boom of the Celtic Tiger years, depicts Dublin as a pulsating metropolis; the city is characterized largely by its underbelly on the one hand, and by the self-destructive excesses of the spiritually numbed middle class on the other. Consisting of three monologues, two by women and one by a man, which gradually reveal their interconnectedness, and which are delivered in a static theatrical situation, the series play out against a Dublin which serves as a backdrop for a true human inferno, where nearly everybody is intent on doing harm to others (Figure 8.1).