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Two Plays: Splendour/Tender (Oberon Modern Playwrights) by Abi Morgan
Inside a beautiful state residence on the edge of a city, four women wait. They films, Prada, chilli vodka, anything. Outside civil war looms ever nearer. With wit and delight in the unusual, Splendour encompasses both the cruel veneer of our lives and the beating heart within.In Tender , in a city of fast talk and chance encounters, how much faith can we put in other people? Abi Morgan’s acerbic play takes a scalpel to modern love and friendship.
- GenresPlays
Paperback
First published September 1, 2005
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July 23, 2017
Morgan is perhaps better known as a screenwriter, but she began her career as a first rate playwright, as exemplified by these two early works.
Splendour is a rather hard read, as it takes awhile to figure out the basic premise (a general's wife and her best friend await her husband's return with a foreign journalist who has come to take his photo, along with her interpreter, while a war rages outside) - and even then not all the pieces seem to align, but apparently this makes for some riveting theatre. It isn't always quite clear when the characters are speaking to each other, voicing inner thoughts, direct addressing the audience, or speaking on phones; and compounding the confusion is that all characters speak English, although the journalist is supposedly speaking another tongue and another character is (sometimes) translating her words for the other two. The play's initial scene is also revisited several times, speeded up and with additional information added in each go-round.
Tender is a more traditional, and perhaps bleaker play: several couples and friends navigate the hurdles inherent in modern relationships, with infidelity and desertion being the predominant themes.
Splendour is a rather hard read, as it takes awhile to figure out the basic premise (a general's wife and her best friend await her husband's return with a foreign journalist who has come to take his photo, along with her interpreter, while a war rages outside) - and even then not all the pieces seem to align, but apparently this makes for some riveting theatre. It isn't always quite clear when the characters are speaking to each other, voicing inner thoughts, direct addressing the audience, or speaking on phones; and compounding the confusion is that all characters speak English, although the journalist is supposedly speaking another tongue and another character is (sometimes) translating her words for the other two. The play's initial scene is also revisited several times, speeded up and with additional information added in each go-round.
Tender is a more traditional, and perhaps bleaker play: several couples and friends navigate the hurdles inherent in modern relationships, with infidelity and desertion being the predominant themes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review