Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
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by Alex Poch-Goldin, directed by Gabriel Barre
Planet 88 with Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto
May 10-27, 2001
“A Hotel in Need of Renovation”
"This Hotel" by the fine Toronto actor Alex Poch-Goldin received rave reviews at the 1998 Toronto Fringe Festival and is now revived in an 85-minute version by Planet 88 in association with Theatre Passe Muraille . Hotels have functioned as symbolic loci of inner turmoil for as long as they were large enough or isolated enough to seem alienating. They can be a microcosm of this the world as in Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel" (1929) or of the next as in Sartre's "No Exit" (1944). It doesn't take too long to think of numerous examples of hotels as analogues for the psyche in such films as "Psycho" (1960), "The Silence" (1963) or "The Shining" (1980). The metaphor and the language associated with it are so common they appear in rock songs from Elvis to the Eagles. Therefore, when we see a new play using the hotel as metaphor, we are naturally curious what the author will do that is different.
In the case of "This Hotel" the answer is nothing much. In the first scene Lester, flowers in hand, comes home and sees his wife Arlene in the arms of another man and with every intention of continuing the liaison despite Lester's presence. Lester leaves in dismay, his home dissolves into a hotel where he finds himself checking in for short stay. The fly-obsessed Bellhop tells Lester the five doors to his room hide secrets, dreams or empty corridors. Scenes follow in seemingly random order showing various versions of Arlene's affair, Arlene as a Southern belle named Estelle and her lover as an Italian named Rex, the mysterious guest Louise initiating an affair with him, the Bellhop as hotel prostitute with a deeply conflicted married man named Monty and Lester's first meeting with Arlene . After a sudden feeling of remorse, Lester returns home. There is no other man but there is also no resolution.
There are problems with both the scenario and language of the play. To have the Bellhop as psychpomp explain several times what the hotel means suggests that Poch-Goldin is unaware of how clichéd his central metaphor is. Even the Bellhop's secondary metaphor comparing people to flies caught in a spider's web is a cliché. While the numerous short scenes are juxtaposed in interesting ways, it is not clear that they are linked associatively as one might expect in a dream or leading in any particular direction if the hotel is the kind of purgatory it seems to be. Aggravating the problem is language that is resolutely prosaic and thus totally at odds with the setting. It is neither rich in poetry, rich in subtext or rich in wit as, respectively, Strindberg, Pinter and Stoppard have used in similar circumstances. Perhaps this is why the most effective scenes are mimed to music or played in silence.
Nevertheless, the play could not have a better production. What the dialogue lacks in invention, director Kelly Thornton and her design team go all out to supply. The magical dissolution of Lester's house into the hotel is accomplished by the superb coordination of Steve Lucas's cleverly designed set, Peter Freund's lighting and Richard Feren's soundscape. One ingenious set element can change with a certain amount of fuss from couch to bed to table to bar. Angela Thomas's costumes--attractive for the women, humorous for the men--are also designed for the rapid transformations of characters even on stage. Gizella Witkowsky provides the choreography, most notably the menacing tango for the Bellhop and Louise near the start of the show.
While all of the characters remain enigmas to each other and the audience even by the end, Poch-Goldin has written a number of strong scenes and the excellent cast makes the most of them. Not that long ago Randy Hughson was lonely man suffering from hyperacute hearing in Morris Panych's "Earshot". In "This Hotel" he is a lonely man suffering from visual and auditory hallucinations. It is a sign of Hughson's skill that he has sharply delineated what in lesser hands might have been very similar portrayals. Brenda Bazinet clearly differentiates her two roles as Arlene and Estelle. Arlene has transformed her secret suffering into a deliberate cruelty against Lester that even she finds distasteful. Estelle comes straight from Tennessee Williams country, true to a fantasy husband she imagines roaming the world for her. Veronika Hurnik oozes sensuality as the elegant nymphomaniac Louise in great contrast to Antoinette, French-speaking maid.
Richard Zeppieri plays Alene's lover and a caricatured Italian harassing Estelle, differentiated mostly by the latter's accent and gestures. His third role, however, as the nerdish, firmly closeted Monty he plays with gusto and makes him the funniest thing in the show. It took me far too long to figure out what Alon Nashman as the Bellhop was doing. At first it seemed that he was actually supposed to be several different people working in the hotel. Only when he changed outfits in full view was it clear that he was one person vainly pretending to serve functions of desk clerk, bellhop, bartender, lounge entertainer and prostitute. This could have been quite humorous if it had been directed more clearly.
I am very much in favour of plays that make an attempt to escape the strictures of realism in which so much North American drama is still bound. But as any of the great anti-realist plays of the 20th century demonstrate, this kind of play must have a fresh outlook and some internal consistency to be effective. With film noir inspiring some of the language and many of the situations and the hotel-as-psyche already a well-worn trope, "This Hotel" presents us with more clash of clichés than a new world with its own rules. The final tableau of Lester and Arlene is meant to make us re-evaluate all the has gone before, but, since I had lost interest in them well before the end, I felt little inclined to do so.
Photo: Alex Poch-Goldin and Veronika Hurnik. ©2001 Planet 88.
2001-05-15
This Hotel