Guests arrive in the hotel lobby, and are split into groups with an usher, signified by a buttonhole flower of different colours. We are then quickly briefed by the usher, who acts as our guide, up the stairs, and into a hotel room where the party has begun. The script is a collection of 6 15 minute scenes which overlap, taking place in 6 separate rooms on the same hotel floor. As we progress from one room to the next, elements of the story reveal themselves, reminiscent of Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests. Indeed in a similar way, the depth of the relationships grows, and our perceptions of behaviours change.
The timeline of the script is quite impressive, and the performance a feat of stage management and direction. The entire company work as a unit to craft deep and meaningful performances in these tiny rooms, with audience often right under their noses (at times literally). The choreography of the scenes to re-set themselves, leveraging the character of “the cleaner” to reset time and space, but also to provide a point of view on the activities, is a clever device.
This is a remount of the 2013 production, and an exceptional one. I wouldn’t argue that it is doing anything particularly NEW in the world of immersive, but indeed it did it quite well.