Gripping ‘Splendour’

“Splendour,” receiving its U.S. premiere at the Globe Theatres’ Cassius Carter stage, offers an ironically titled, kaleidoscopic look at four diverse women whose lives intersect and devolve as the society around them disintegrates.

British playwright Abi Morgan’s style is intricate and multifaceted, like a Cubist painting put to words, but it’s not cleverness for its own sake. Ingeniously, she zigs and zags through time, shifting emphasis while continually unveiling aspects and insights as the story stutter-steps its way to its inexorable end.

Scenes are re-created, with one woman’s words now spoken by another. Sentences are fragmented, abbreviated and unrelated to the one before. Separate and dissimilar conversations intermingle. For the audience, it means an initial cryptic challenge, but, with each turn of the prism, the image grows clearer. And the final picture is riveting.

It’s the present. In an unnamed country, a civil war is raging between north and south, and a photojournalist has arrived at the home of the nation’s dictator, assigned to do a portrait of the despotic general who has controlled the nation with a vicious rule. She and her accompanying translator are welcomed by the leader’s wife, and all are soon joined by the wife’s longtime best friend. The general, his wife says, has been delayed by some work, and as they chat, their conversation makes it obvious that their feelings toward each other are chillier than the vodka they’re drinking.

The best friends really aren’t; the photographer dislikes the assignment, the general and his wife; and the translator is more interested in what she can steal than in helping anyone communicate. Their wait, at first seeming like that for Godot, grows more ominous with recurring rings of the phone and increasingly loud rumbles of approaching destruction.

The script’s quirkiness makes it ideal for theater in the round, since the repetition of scenes and dialogue allows a director to reposition and refocus the characters to give everyone a fresh perspective. Director Karen Carpenter takes full advantage, guiding the movements fluidly and subtly. And she has selected a strong cast. All display powerful moments, particularly Gordana Rashovich. As the wife, who, like her control, is unraveling, Rashovich manages to elicit sympathy for an unsavory soul.

Paul Peterson’s sound design is like a fifth character, providing portents of doom, and Charlotte Devaux’s costumes unerringly delineate each woman’s position and personality, from the wife’s ruffled fashions -- her outfit of red suggests the blood on her hands -- to the translator’s peasant and combat garb. Tony Fanning’s set, lighted appropriately by Aaron M. Copp, features warmly elegant ebony-and-gold furniture and other trappings of wealth. But all around are piles of snowflakes, signaling the coming chill. And the overhead chandelier hangs at an angle, an ideal symbol for the skew in these women’s futures.

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‘Splendour’

Where: Globe Theatres’ Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.

Ends: March 16

Price: $19-$50

Contact: (619) 239-2255

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.