Review: Splendour

Splendour by Abi Morgan

Harlos & Queensize Productions

Old Fitzroy Theatre

March 8, 2007

As I made my way to the Old Fitzroy, a small tissue box shaped theatre in between the Woolloomooloo slums and bright lights of Sydney's red light district, the heavens were opening up.

A storm was heading our way from the southern coast and rolling in, painting the sky charcoal grey and bright red, as the sun slipped under the clouds from the west of the city.

The weather created an electricity in the air - where people breath deeper and the heavy air swirls through your hair and you feel small in front of the sky's expanse.

Gathered with one hundred others in the theatre waiting for the house lights to go down, the audience carried the electricity together into the stalls. Bouncing off us, was the light reflected from the set of a thousand or so glasses, piled onto one another floor-to-ceiling.

Something is going to be broken tonight I suspect.

All the main press are there, from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun Herald, the Daily Telegraph. The typical invitation opening night crowd surrounding them.

Darkness. The four performers come from underneath the audience and enter the space for their story to be told. White chairs frame the space in front of the thousand glasses as one performer desperately begins to clean up a mess on the floor. Something is broken already.

A foreign journalist has come to an Eastern European city to photograph a General in the midst of a war. They are Eastern European, you can tell... It's the gregarious shoes, coats and make-up. And the way they drink. But it could be anywhere really. Eastern Europe is convenient, stereotyped and so very far away from Westerners. But terribly familiar.

The wife is there, boasting of her accessories. The wife's friend, desperate for approval. The translator with a passion for kleptomania and incorrect translations. The frustrated journalist waiting waiting waiting.

The characters bounce off each other circling, sitting, drinking, looking afar. Passages flip back and you start again and then time races forward and back again. What on earth is going on? But you catch up, as you sink into this house that overlooks a city that's slowly been torn apart.

The phone keeps ringing. Mariana will answer it. The Housekeeper.

Can't we leave. No, the car doesn't work. When will the general be here. Soon. He has to sign some papers.

Eastern Europe zooms closer into view. This is Serbia. It is Belgrade. I recognise the bombed bridges I saw. The gutted apartment blocks.

This is Bosnia. It is Sarajevo. It is Srebrenica. I recognise the tanks I saw. The gutted parliament. The bullet holes in the wall. The barbed wire.

I'm too close to this. And in my mind it's getting closer as the play transcends the words and the circling and the chatter on the stage and the truth of the situation emerges in a way that sweeps over your head and slams you in the middle of your back into your heart.

This production is brilliant, uncomfortable and surprising. But you have a choice to sympathise with it, or resist it and view it from the comfort of your sofa at home.

With one final gasp the production ends. The house lights go up and you leave. I walked out into the nights sky. The rain had passed. It was a night that reminded me of Belgrade. The humidity, the storms, the heaviness that weighed upon the people of a city. And it weighed upon an audience in Woolloomooloo too.

Image courtesy of Harlos: Gertraud Ingeborg, Elaine Hudson, Angela Bauer, Esti Regos