Hotel Sorrento - Class act
Fri, 13 Aug 2004, 04:36 pmWalter Plinge2 posts in thread
Hotel Sorrento - Class act
Fri, 13 Aug 2004, 04:36 pmA very strong production performed by a very capable cast. For my money, Hotel Sorrento is a classic Aussie play which – although some might consider a little dated - still deals with elements of the Great Aussie Cringe that are alive and well. More importantly, though, Hotel Sorrento is an intelligent and sensitive portrayal of a family in crisis:- denial, silence, resentment, jealously – the whole familial (and familiar) catastrophe.
A fine example of ensemble acting in this production. The three sisters – Meg (Angelique Malcolm), Pip (Alinta Carroll) and Hilary (Shirley Van Sanden) – give strong, believable and nuanced performances. Whenever they share the stage they are totally believable as a trio of siblings – the looks and silences that pass between them are as telling as the words; oodles of sub-text here. The rest of the cast are also very strong in this ensemble. There were a few times in the first act when I wondered if Benj D’Addario’s Dick and Jay Walsh’s Dad were little too “heightened” in the context of the overall style of the play, however Walsh did provide a warm comic relief, whilst D’Addario’s always-indignant Dick came into his own in the second act.
Hotel Sorrento is all about relationships, though, and the cast came up trumps all the way through in this respect. Angelique Malcolm and Gerald Hitchcock as the feisty Australian woman writer and her long-suffering and slightly pompous Brit husband managed to convey a warm and intimate relationship in the first act, and a severely tested one in the second. Shirley Van Sanden and Nicholas McRobbie offered us a very affectionate mother and son, with McRobbie signalling a bright future for himself, if his effortless naturalism here is anything to go by. Francesca Waters also gave a solid – if slightly too unremittingly upbeat and jolly - performance as the supportive lover-of-the-arts, Marge.
The highlight for me was a lengthy dinner scene encompassing all cast members (except Dad who didn’t make it into Act Two) in which the cross-currents of cultural critique and family drama intermingle and collide. Once again, so much extra was communicated in non-verbal ways – no small feat, I imagine, with all that distracting “buffet-choreography” going on. Other highlights were scene between Malcolm and McRobbie in which Malcolm manages to rise above the expositional aspects of this virtual monologue in a very moving manner, and a lovely scene between Van Sanden and McRobbie as the latter awakes from a recurring dream haunted about the loss of his grandfather.
This is not a play with a strong narrative that drives us towards an inexorable climax – it’s more subtle and gentle than that. I suspect some punters may find this a bit of a problem, but there’s plenty to engage the audience in this story, and this production. The night I went – opening night – some of the scene changes were a bit long-winded so I hope they managed to speed things up since then.
Well done to director Jenny Davis and her ensemble cast.
Larry OÂ’Dea.
A fine example of ensemble acting in this production. The three sisters – Meg (Angelique Malcolm), Pip (Alinta Carroll) and Hilary (Shirley Van Sanden) – give strong, believable and nuanced performances. Whenever they share the stage they are totally believable as a trio of siblings – the looks and silences that pass between them are as telling as the words; oodles of sub-text here. The rest of the cast are also very strong in this ensemble. There were a few times in the first act when I wondered if Benj D’Addario’s Dick and Jay Walsh’s Dad were little too “heightened” in the context of the overall style of the play, however Walsh did provide a warm comic relief, whilst D’Addario’s always-indignant Dick came into his own in the second act.
Hotel Sorrento is all about relationships, though, and the cast came up trumps all the way through in this respect. Angelique Malcolm and Gerald Hitchcock as the feisty Australian woman writer and her long-suffering and slightly pompous Brit husband managed to convey a warm and intimate relationship in the first act, and a severely tested one in the second. Shirley Van Sanden and Nicholas McRobbie offered us a very affectionate mother and son, with McRobbie signalling a bright future for himself, if his effortless naturalism here is anything to go by. Francesca Waters also gave a solid – if slightly too unremittingly upbeat and jolly - performance as the supportive lover-of-the-arts, Marge.
The highlight for me was a lengthy dinner scene encompassing all cast members (except Dad who didn’t make it into Act Two) in which the cross-currents of cultural critique and family drama intermingle and collide. Once again, so much extra was communicated in non-verbal ways – no small feat, I imagine, with all that distracting “buffet-choreography” going on. Other highlights were scene between Malcolm and McRobbie in which Malcolm manages to rise above the expositional aspects of this virtual monologue in a very moving manner, and a lovely scene between Van Sanden and McRobbie as the latter awakes from a recurring dream haunted about the loss of his grandfather.
This is not a play with a strong narrative that drives us towards an inexorable climax – it’s more subtle and gentle than that. I suspect some punters may find this a bit of a problem, but there’s plenty to engage the audience in this story, and this production. The night I went – opening night – some of the scene changes were a bit long-winded so I hope they managed to speed things up since then.
Well done to director Jenny Davis and her ensemble cast.
Larry OÂ’Dea.