This is not the first time that I have been asked to judge a St Andrean’s final contribution to the theatrical world we have here, but rarely has it felt so bittersweet. In her four years here, Katie Brennan has proved herself  as one of the town’s most competent producers, and a reliable face on the Mermaid’s committee. Last year, she made her debut as a writer and director with Queen of Seventh Avenue, and luckily for me, she took up her pen again.

Ouroboros, Brennan’s swan song (swan play?) is a testament to the persistence of the human heart. The action follows three independent, yet subtly related, love stories, between a rock star and a barmaid in modern New York, a piano teacher and his student in Nazi-occupied Paris, and a gentleman’s wife and a man from the colonies in nineteenth century England. All three narratives are driven by the duo of Maddie Inskeep and Tommy Rowe.

Not much in that is particularly new. Meaningful doubling is an important feature in Liz Lochhead’s Mary Queen of Scots. The piano teacher/student relationship was the central theme in last year’s student-written piece, Giulietta. Cloud Atlas explored the relationship between people and narratives temporally separated. Star cross’d lovers, holocaust tragedy, love vs. duty, we’ve seen these things before. But what is familiar is familiar for a reason, because it works. And like the eponymous symbol, when it’s packaged in an interesting way and executed well, I gladly bite my own tail to experience those elements again.

And it is certainly executed well. Rowe and Inskeep each dealt with three different characters, with three different accents, along with dealing with the sheer mass of content they had to learn and get across. And yet they performed with exceptional poise and charm. Rowe was so confident in his delivery, handling each line with a rarely matched naturalism and grace. Inskeep’s physicality got my attention; the subtle movements of her reactions allowed much to be left unsaid. Both seemed to glow on stage. But together, they really shined. The extent of their chemistry translated to real human affection on stage, so I didn’t just see the hard pain of separation, and the heart-meltingly fleeting moments of reunion, I felt it in my gut. That’s extremely personal and totally intangible, but it was there, and deserves recognition and praise.

The comfort the actors shared also gave them a unique ability to adapt, which became important. It was clear, at times, that things were not going quite as written, but they handled it with such ease that I rarely didn’t mind and, I believe, often failed to notice. More annoying were certain technical issues: sound quality in pre-recorded segments, the menu popping up on the projector and anachronistic items being left on stage. These were distractions that I wish had been smoothed over.

That said, without doing anything new, Brennan leaves me wanting more. Through the sincerity of her narrative, and the strength of the performance, she’s charmed the venom out of this snake of a critic. As she moves on to greener pastures, I’m left hoping that, like her characters, her next incarnation comes around soon, with great ideas, and maybe, just maybe, a tattoo of a snake curled into a circle on her arm.

WORDS: Bennett Bonci