A woman gives birth. Out come a house, a television, barracks, a church, barbed wire - a range of devices she can use to manipulate matters and achieve her chief ambition: the exercise of power. A work midway between Jarry and Mayakovsky, and a brave, virulent denunciation of dictators and their rise to power.

The subject and style make La chute a highly original play. The subject deals with Serbia over the last ten years. The style reflects reality, creating a historical work that offers an account of what is happening in the here and now. It may even be seen as a cry for help.

Biljana Srbljanovic is brave in her denunciation of the actions of the Milosevic-Markovic couple during their rise to power (Mirjana Markovic is the wife of the Yugoslavian president and allegedly the brains behind his dictatorship.). The author provides a clear breakdown and comprehensive analysis of the means used to subjugate - in every sense of the word - the people, highlighting the 'refined' manipulation of the masses and the typical methods of a police state. Religion, media, family, national pride, traditional values and a host of other symbols twisted by the two dictators are laid bare. Srbljanovic never embellishes, and if she does occasionally embroider, it is only to better highlight the absurdity of the situation. Her methods are simple and effective. Srbljanovic extracts the key points from a bulk of political discourse spanning the last ten years and clarifies them. It all boils down to the same aim, presented in a thousand different ways. She makes every effort to follow 'her' president's orders word for word, which naturally produces a ludicrous and comic effect. As for the writing itself, the foothold in reality allows the author to maintain her distance while denouncing the system from the inside. Her characters follow their orders to the letter and are laughable, which is the chosen effect. To be more exact, only the two dictators and their two servants are seen as ridiculous. Two other characters representing the people are 'lost' and treated affectionately and with understanding by the author.

In fact, Srbljanovic deals with her characters in two contrasting yet complementary ways: through the script and through the stage setting. The décor is complex and surrealistic yet in tune with the writing style. It highlights, distorts and ridicules the characters and situations to a point beyond language. There are no holds barred, save the need to understand the extent to which mental perversion holds people in its thrall.

La chute is a play that portrays civil unrest and the cynical 'hope' that all things must pass, which is hope born of desperation. And though the scenes illustrating popular beliefs may now seem unreal, incomprehensible and even exotic to the western eye, it should never be forgotten that the best way to subjugate a people is to strip them of the ability to ask questions and seek answers. The archaic forms of conventional wisdom did not tolerate such questioning. Dictators feed off mental regression. This is, perhaps, their greatest crime.