The Hotel is a hugely ambitious piece of site-specific interactive theatre which fully immerses the ‘guests’ (as audience members are referred to) into the parallel world of a struggling Edinburgh lodging.

The guests are met by a concierge and guided to the labyrinthine establishment where they are, with a little guidance, free to wander the rooms and discover a series of comedy vignettes along with a plot pertaining to the shambolic hotel manager.

Each attendee will start at a different part of the performance and so will have a unique experience, but many start in the restaurant where comedy songs are played, speed-dating entered into, and a menu of jokes served up, all washed down with a plot contrivance involving a hamster.

Registration is the next part of the stay with guests being prodded and measured up, subjected to psychological tests and stolen from, with items being returned by a stressed and screaming hotel employee at the end of his tether.

In the boardroom there is a fight going on, as well as an interview which ends with the candidates racing outside in a bizarre trial involving a tie. A punch-up ensues on the street outside, much to the surprise of passing motorists.

Each room offers up its own delights and characters, with very little scripted material meaning that the performance is reliant on the audience as much as on the performers. There are a fair number of shocks, with staff falling out of cupboards and psychotic kitchen porters screaming through a glass screen. A rotating cast means you can never be sure who will be present but the guru, who takes you through a number of ever-more-ridiculous chants, and the frankly terrifying gym staff would seem to be regular fixtures. A visit to the cabaret lounge is a must and features a range of performers to entertain the tired guest.

What makes the show so rewarding, however, are the huge number of small touches – the pictures of the guests who have ‘yet to visit the hotel’, the clues left in the manager’s bedroom suggesting that all is not well with the establishment, the faded hotel lounge with some interesting televisual treats. You can even get a massage, and seemingly everything is recorded on video cameras.

After just an all-too-swift 55 minutes, it’s time to go and this is heralded by the final meltdown of the hotel manager, dressed in a bathrobe with a half-drink bottle of Jack Daniels hanging from his pocket. A beautifully abusive judgement on the standard of hotel guests leads to the befuddled hotel staff ejecting everybody from the property.

Picking out any individual member of the huge ensemble cast would be impossible but the performances are all top-notch, with no incongruities shattering the carefully built-up illusion. The performers all get into the spirit of the performance whole-heartedly and occasionally paranoia makes it difficult to know who exactly is in on the jokes. This confusion adds to the feeling of being off-balance, as does the forcible separation of couples on entering the hotel and the constant probing questions asked by the staff: ‘What does your t-shirt mean? Have you any experience of bombs? Do you consider yourself to be in good health? Would you consider yourself to be a calm person?’.

No stone is left unturned in adding to the experience, stimulating all five senses throughout. The overarching ambition of the production is impressive and the dedication to creating a truly unique show admirable.

Cast Credits: (not exhaustive - alpha order): Tom Adams. Dan Atkinson. Elsie Bramich. Bristol Revunions. Alfie Brown. Holly Burn. Helen Cripps. Elle Cummings. Alexis Dubas. Pippa Evans. Andy Foster. Ed Gamble. The Harpingers. Dougie Hastings. Sian Harries. Susanna Hislop. Colin Hoult. Idiots of Ants. Eri Jackson. Humphrey Kerr. Nishant Kumar. Les Enfants Terrible. Lloyd Langford. Nat Luurtsema. Alex Nash. Thomas Neehan. Alex Maple. Ben Partridge. Simon Rhodes. Daniel Rigby. Jez Scharf. Daniel Taylor. Til We Leave. Thom Tuck. Dan Walsemy. Martin White. Josh Widdlecome. Mike Wozniak.

Company Credits: Writers - Mark Watson and Simon Pearce. Designer - Becs Andrews. Construction – Gary Campbell. Assistant Set Designers – Aaron Mavinga, Astrid Sarkissian, Bob De Broise, Carla Goodman, Catherine Morgan, Charlotte Bullock, Cristina Soru, Emma Tompkins, Joanna Ebling, Liz Hurt, Richard Evans, Stephanie Johns, Zoe Parsons. Costume Supervisor – Maudie Whitehead. TV Room Designers – Tom Kingsley, Arthur Smith, Tom Williams, Hans Teeuwen, Jonny Sweet. Technician – Dan Walmsey. Graphics – Marek Kianicka. Extra design – Pete Le May. Company – The Invisible Dot.

END

(c) David Hepburn 2009

reviewed Thursday 27 August 09 / Assembly Rooms @ George Street, Edinburgh, UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com