Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe electrified the Bay Area theater scene with the riveting "Howie the Rookie" in 2000. Now he returns to San Francisco's Magic Theatre with the haunting "Terminus," an equally explosive drama that leaves an indelible a mark on the imagination.

Bracingly directed by Jon Tracy in its first American production, this is an eerie fugue of a play unleashed on a landscape of fog and shadow. The spellbinding 100-minute drama drags the viewer to hell and back. It's an almost hypnotic experience that leaves you simultaneously exhilarated and shattered, reeling from the intensity of it all.

Marissa Keltie, Carl Lumbly, and Stacy Ross in the first American production of Mark O&#8217;Rowe&#8217;s &quot;Terminus&quot; at Magic Theatre.Photo:
Marissa Keltie, Carl Lumbly, and Stacy Ross in the first American production of Mark O'Rowe's "Terminus" at Magic Theatre. Photo: Jennifer Reiley ( Jennifer Reiley )

The startlingly visceral work revolves around three forsaken souls known only as A, B and C whose stories unfold in a mesmerizing maze of interlocking monologues. There is no dialogue in what is essentially a play in verse that revels in the poetry of the Irish accent, its propulsion and cadence.

Enter this gritty netherworld at your own risk. The piece begins with the roar and thunder of an earthquake or other cataclysmic event. The instinctual response is dread, as it should be.

Three troubled souls

Danger and regret remain constants in O'Rowe's work. Here we trace the paths of a sad young woman (Marissa Keltie) searching for love, a mother (Stacy Ross) desperately seeking to expiate her guilt and a painfully shy man (Carl Lumbly) who has traded his soul to the devil.

Plunged into a limbo of despair, they ponder the grime and grace of Dublin's "sullied magnificence" as if through a shroud. They stand perched on a blasted terrain of gravel (set by Robert Brill) speaking in alternating arias of despair. Like the rest of us, they are all headed for oblivion by one route or another.

Words hurtle through the air like knives in a pulse-pounding tale of suspense, betrayal and redemption. The young woman goes out on a lark and loses everything. The older woman puts herself in dire straits to save an innocent. The man barrels through everyone he meets with murder in his eye.

The language aches with meaning, whether describing a blade ripping into a neck or the stumble of drunks out of bars at closing time.


Verbal violence

Make no mistake, O'Rowe ventures into some bleak, and even gruesome, territory that elicited gasps of shock from the audience. It's astonishing how visceral the violence is here, given that it's only conveyed through the alchemy of actors speaking text. No visuals are needed.

But the true revelation is the beauty the playwright finds in the darkness. He doesn't gloss over the grotesque aspects of life, he glories in them, creating a terrifying stage tableau with words alone.

Striking that balance between harrowing and poetic is no mean feat, but these three consummate actors are certainly up to it. Ross displays her usual staggering command of nuance as the schoolteacher bent on saving a former student. Keltie radiates vulnerability as the lost young woman starved for affection. Lumbly is nothing less than chilling as man seduced by flights of rage.

Tracy, who also directed last season's unforgettable "Any Given Day," fills each moment with a palpable sense of urgency and clarity that's quite thrilling. Magic artistic director Loretta Greco has said she has been working to snag the rights to this piece for five years, and there's no doubt that "Terminus" was indeed worth the wait.



Written by Mark O'Rowe

Through: June 16
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets: $45-$60, 415-441-8822.