Splendour is a play about four women: a dictator's wife, her best friend, a photographer and her translator. Together they drink chilli vodka and things get more and more intense as the dictator's wife begins to face her worst fears, seeing her personal and political world unravel as the revolution burns outside her home.

Splendour was the winner of a Fringe First and Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2000. It is a labyrinthine play dealing with time & memory, and what makes it even more challenging is that it's also a play about miscommunication. It's a challenge for the director to make sure that the audience knows what's going on; if there is confusion and abstraction on stage, the audience should not be confused themselves. Lighting could have made some of the transitions more clear, but even though you might feel a little confused during the first part of The Collapsible Theatre Company's production, you do come to understand everything before the end.

The lines are fast and so intense that you almost have stop watching, look down and just listen to the play like a radio drama so that you're able to take everything in. This is a very challenging play for student actors, as there is so much dialogue to learn and memorize that sometimes we see the actors anticipating their lines; they are unfortunately so busy with their lines at times that we don't have the opportunity to see them reacting. And we want to see their reactions, be they terror from a threatening phone call, or some absurd comic release with the repeated downing of chilli vodka. Splendour's performance in the round is done well, and especially in the intimate space of the Burton Taylor Theatre, the effective blocking provides the illusion that the women were very much trapped, both literally and metaphorically.

The opening night is always a challenge, and with less than a dozen people in the audience the cast worked together well, creating a good ensemble. This production of Splendour is worth seeing, not just because it is an award-winning play, and not just because student theatre should be seen and supported, but because it's an interesting and intelligent production of a modern play about dictatorship, with a timeless quality.

Rebekah Roy, 27.05.03