Splendour

by Abi Morgan

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 6 August 2015

The play, directed by Robert Hastie and designed by Peter McKintosh, features Sinéad Cusack as Micheleine, the wife of a dictator, Michelle Fairley as her friend Genevieve, Zawe Ashton as Gilma, an interpreter, and Genevieve O'Reilly as Kathryn, a visiting photojournalist. It is set on the evening of a coup in an unnamed (generic) dictatorship.

In a series of scenes which often replay fragmented pieces of dialogue between the four women, we gradually gain an impression of the catastrophic political events taking place outside the presidential palace as Micheleine tries to entertain Kathryn until her husband the president appears for a photo session. It becomes clear that the man will not turn up, that in fact he has fled for his life abandoning his wife to her fate. The friend Geraldine has been co-opted to help on the occasion, but she brings bitter memories and recriminations reflecting badly on the president and Micheleine. Gilma, acting as interpreter between Kathryn and the other two, subversively mis-translates when it suits her, and purloins objects into her bag or pockets, thinking that the others do not notice - or not really caring whether they do or not.

Once the style of the piece, with its odd interruptions of interior monologue and circling around the same inconsequential chat, is understood, the play reveals itself as a powerful investigation of political corruption and collapse. Sinéad Cusack gives a chilling performance as Micheleine, covering her panic as she realises she has been betrayed with an accustomed social veneer of steely charm. But finally she shows steeliness all the way through; the girlish flirtatiousness revealed in her recollections of teenage love has hardened into a deterination to impose her will at all costs.

Genevieve O'Reilly as the outsider Kathryn adopts a professional detachment, aware of the dishonest Gilma, the nouveau-riche brashness of Micheleine and the despair behind Genevieve's somewhat dowdy presence. At one level this is just another job, and she is familiar with the risks and the petty cheating, but she is also exasperated at being trapped in the palace while a less competent colleague has been sent to cover the 'real' action, and Micheleine's ultimate request profoundly unsettles her.

Zawe Ashton presents an opportunistic young woman whose increasingly brazen pilfering is a response to prejudice and oppression - yet the supposedly political gesture is mixed with unthinking adolescent rebelliousness, undercutting any freedom-fighting glamour with an ugly strain of selfishness.

Michelle Fairley's Genevieve appears the weakest, at the beck and call of a friend she has long despised, accepting the story of her husband's depression and suicide, and the sniping slurs against her son. Of course there  is more behind this to be revealed - perhaps somewhat predictably - and she is fact eaten away by the sacrifices she has made.

This is another study of isolation and ambition, and it is most interesting to have seen 'The Red Lion', with an all-male cast, and 'Splendour', with an all-female cast, within a few days of each other. They touch on similar themes in completely different ways, and both show dramatists in fine form.