Power games the pulse for Genet's dance of death
Author: BY JAMES WAITES
Date: 12/07/1995
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald


GENET is wrongly characterised as a writer obsessed with sex - male-to-male sex at that. What interested him, in relation 
to this subject or the many others he touched upon, was power, the use and abuse of power, by both institutions and individuals. 
Genet's experience of boys' homes, his adopted family, school, the army, prison, and even Paris's salon society, all taught 
him how degrading and refined the strategic deployment of power by one individual over another, or the State over an 
individual, could be. Just as he learned first-hand how, in a matter of minutes or a long night, roles could be reversed. 

Genet was at the height of his powers when, in 1948, he wrote Splendid's, his taut and compact study on this theme. 
A criminal gang is holed-up on an upper floor of a fancy hotel. They have taken an American heiress hostage, but unknown 
to the hordes of police surrounding the building, she has been killed by one of the gang - more or less for kicks, to 
lift the level of personal danger. One of the police has decided to switch sides, again for no better reason than the 
adrenalin rush of betrayal, and together the men play a waiting game that can have only one finale. 

The audience witnesses a dance of death, in which each character rises to some position of dominance - usually to fall. 

For all its gangster slang, Splendid's is a play of ideas in a French formal tradition dating back to Racine. Written only
four years after Sartre's claustrophobic study in existentialism, No Exit, Splendid's is, in my opinion, the better play. 
It digs deeper psychologically, does not preach, is innately theatrical and often funny. The B-grade movie veneer, the 
faultless structure and its brevity (90 minutes only) might tempt some to underestimate how brutally resonant the play's 
themes are. Like a gemstone, the play is multi-faceted when held up to the light, rewarding contemplation. 

The play was never produced in Genet's lifetime and only in the past year has the script become available. Why Genet 
withheld it has never been adequately explained, but Jim Sharman suggests in the program that the prospect of a government 
pardon for outstanding offences may well have encouraged the writer to keep back a work so potentially subversive. That 
said, Splendid's looks primarily at the darker politics of the soul, trouncing much of the pontificating and romanticism of 
criminality found in the novels. Perhaps Genet chose not to tarnish his own carefully polished martyr-like image. 

Splendid's is not an easy play to produce but this production comes close to dazzling achievement. Sharman takes a credit 
for co-translating the work with May-Brit Akerholt, and for conceiving the production, after having to hand over the 
directorial reins, due to ill-health, to cast member Bogdan Koca. For Koca, it's a big and longoverdue break. The production 
is intelligent, sophisticated and utterly seamless, working off the most elegant set (by Michael Wilkinson) the Belvoir 
Street Theatre has probably ever seen. Rory Dempster's lighting design is, once again, compelling and apt. 

The performances - gangsters garbed as rich party-goers - are as artfully sculptured as eight different ice carvings and 
only need the familiarity of a few more run-throughs to achieve the sustained aura of imminent risk which, at the moment, 
wavers. 

Ralph Cotterill and Jacek Koman, the senior players, while good, both appear to be suffering - is it the flu or does this 
play simply get to people after a while? Otherwise it's a young cast - David Wenham, Daniel Rigney, Colin Moody, Teo Gebert, Joel McIlroy, Leigh Russell - who work excellently as a group, responding well to Koca's eye for detail.