Drip, drip, drip. The information fell in drops. Each drop seemingly unconnected in time to the last or the next but together they filled the bucket. But like drips in a bucket it takes quite some time before the drops have very much impact and then is comes like a flood. Splendour at Metro Arts tonight was like that. This is the story of four women - the wife of a dictator, her friend, a foreign journalist and an interpreter - together in a house as civil war approaches the door. The story is played out in fragments - like a disjointed memory. Imagine four witnesses to a traumatic event - each remembering different aspects from their own perspectives. Like a detective you pull the story together in your head. Memory is like that, not entirely reliable and certainly not objective especially when people don't mean what they say or say what they mean. But truth is a casualty in war and it is not straight forward. This is 90 minutes of pretty heavy-going stuff. The warning says "coarse language, loud sound effects, themes of suicide and depression, graphic descriptions of war and smoking on stage".
It should also warn you that it is powerful and will haunt you for a long time. It raises as many questions as it answers and the answers it does suggest are not pretty. Drip, drip, drip.
Splendour continues at Metro Arts until April 8
Four stars.Our podcast is here
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