Love a Good Play: Splendour
Donmar Warehouse, August 15, 2015
A play written by one woman for four women; directed by a man; artistically directed by a woman. Those aren’t stats you get every day. This I had to see.
Abi Morgan, since writing this a wee while back, has brought us The Iron Lady and The Hour — more stuff with powerful, compelling female characters. My hopes were high. They were met. LOVED THIS.
Four women are trapped together in a Eastern European Dictator’s living room. I last saw a Chandelier like that at the Ham Yard Hotel… Opulence and signs greed are everywhere — Prada handbags, Venetian glass vases, Siberian shot glasses…
It’s snowing outside, they are all stuck. Also there are sounds of explosions and bombs. Revolution’s in the air.
We meet the Dictator’s wife, Micheline — a magnetic Sinead Cusack who’s overly civilised outer facade passes from inner despair to outer defiance in the face of all the truths that confront her. Her best friend — a dowdy yet steely Michelle Fairley who you know is just biding her time although you have no idea how bad it is for her, a photo journalist — a fabulously disdainful Genevieve O’Reilly pissed off that she has this assignment to photograph the main man when all the action is taking place on the south side. And a very light-fingered interpreter from the North — a skittish Zawe Ashton — you’re never quite sure if she’s going to carry out her own personal revolt.
The polite conversation over chilli vodka soon turns to truths as the bombs get closer, Micheline can’t get in touch with her husband, the snow continues to fall and the food runs out as the staff have evidently left… It looks bleak.
I absolutely loved the structure of the play. Abi Morgan plays with the same scenes from very different angles allowing new information to leak out depending on the perspective you take of each scene. As the scenes repeat, the detail builds and the truth unfolds. It’s beautifully horrifying.
I also couldn’t help thinking — how close to the truth is this? I had a friend who was a soldier in the Bosnian war. The horrors he told me about still truly distress me to this day. This might have been performed in 2000, but throughout I kept thinking of the Ukraine…
The final scene is superbly done. Behind every great man, there’s a great woman. Behind every Dictator too…
5/5 Magnetic, powerful female characters. Formidable.
