Theatre reviews

At a glance

Splendour Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (0131-228 1404) Vicky Featherstone's high-precision, cleverly unsettling production of Abi Morgan's Splendour plays formal games with the waiting game and its psychological tensions. In the swanky state residence of an East European city, four women from very different backgrounds and cultures are flung together on the snowy eve of civil war, waiting for the head of state to appear - while it becomes increasingly clear that he has done a runner. Stylish, but not simply for style's sake, splendour proves that Morgan is a playwright to watch out for. Paul Taylor

Splendour Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (0131-228 1404) Vicky Featherstone's high-precision, cleverly unsettling production of Abi Morgan's Splendour plays formal games with the waiting game and its psychological tensions. In the swanky state residence of an East European city, four women from very different backgrounds and cultures are flung together on the snowy eve of civil war, waiting for the head of state to appear - while it becomes increasingly clear that he has done a runner. Stylish, but not simply for style's sake, splendour proves that Morgan is a playwright to watch out for. Paul Taylor

House/Garden National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000) In an ingenious comic doubleact of dramas, Ayckbourn has the same set of actors racing between two separate but interlocking dramas which cover simultaneous events and are also, by a devilish twist, performed simultaneously in two different theatres and before two distinct audiences. David Haig is excellent as an adulterous country grandee, Malcolm Sinclair splendidly lizard-like as the political fixer who wants him to stand as the local MP. Overall, however, it is the wizardry of the proceedings that captivates, not the performances themselves. PT

Pal Joey Minerva Theatre, Chichester (01243 781312) In Loveday Ingram's enormously enjoyable revival of this Rodgers and Hart classic at Chichester, the studio dimensions of the Minerva Theatre provide the perfect setting for the musical's squalid Chicago nightclub, while the raunchy wit of Craig Revel Horwood's terrific choreography ensures that the five-strong chorus line of lovelies knock us for six. Martin Crewes' Joey is appropriately handsome and hollow-seeming in the anti-hero lead, and if it drags a little in the second half, this still comes highly recommended. PT

Further Than the Furthest Thing Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh(0131-228 1404) Displacement and baffled cultural collision are the concern of Zinnie Harris's Further Than the Furthest Thing, with its story of the inhabitants of a remote British-owned island who are evacuated to Southampton after an earthquake. Harris has distilled her material and cut loose from documentary fact in order to highlight the islanders' predicament: they have become foreigners marooned in Britain, at the mercy of forces over which they have little control. A haunting Festival contribution. PT