The Hotel is an aptly named piece of immersive theatre based in a Hotel at venue 47/49 near London Bridge. The piece was created by JackInabox Theatre Company who were founded in 2011.
You enter the venue, are welcomed to the hotel and ushered to the reception where you are checked in and are given your room key. Well thought through details like this throughout the piece prove that Jackinabox are skilled at creating a world to immerse an audience in. This is further proved by the strongest performances in the piece coming from the hotel staff. The comically rude Hotel Manager played by Stanley Eldbrige really held the performance together and made the interval very enjoyable. The straight faced Columbian maid played by Anias Alvardo Offers highlights of comic genius through her “cleansing”.
You are given a key to one of three possible hotel rooms and each audience member experiences two of these rooms. Each room is directed by a different director and is in its own world in its own right. Because of this, the quality varied dramatically between the rooms. The room directed by Katherine Timms was a melodramatic love story, which had good moments of comedy a clear style and an enjoyable narrative arc. However the room directed by Ed Harlet felt stylistically confused, the complicated text was often rushed and hard to connect with and the whole piece dragged.
The design was well detailed, they used the spaces they were given well, finding inventive entrances and exits and playing off the sounds of the other room further allowing you to believe you were in a hotel. This could of gone further by including the bar staff in the “Hotel” world to make it feel more complete.
This companies strength clearly lies in devising and creating their own world from scratch and characters which live within it. For this I would recommend seeing The Hotel but the quality is not consistent. 3/5
Review written by Lucy Bishop.
The Hotel is currently showing at 47/49 Tanner street until Sunday 19th October. For more information on the production, visit here:
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