Hotel Sorrento - Class act

A 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.

REVIEW BY Mike McCall

Not twenty four hours off a flight from Scotland, with some trepidation regarding jetlag, I took a walk into Perth's cultural centre to see if I could find a show. Consistently, I discover the best theatre in the heart of Northbridge located at Rechabites Hall. Tonight it was a production of Hannie Rayson's early nineties drama, Hotel Sorrento.

The play is centred around the three Moynihan sisters. Hilary is the tragically widowed mother trying to make ends meet in the small Victorian coastal town of Sorrento, while taking care of her son and larriken father, performed with durable liveliness by Jay Walsh, who delightfully charmed audiences with his ocker patriarch.

Hilary's dependable world that she has worked so hard to build after her husband's death is then displaced by the arrival of one sister, the high flying New York executive, Pippa, and the release of a confronting semi autobiographical novel about their lives by the third sister, Meg, who has been living the writer's life with her very English partner, Edwin (played by Gerald Hitchcock), in London. The title of the book, Melancholy, perhaps holds up to the light the essence of the sisters existence, and what must be overcome to move forward in life. Once Meg decides to escape the press, after being nominated for the Booker prize, by returning home, the sisters find themselves having to deal with the unresolved secrets of the past and what to do with their future. Stark perspective arrives unannounced when, once more, tragedy strikes at the heart of their family.

Rayson also delves intelligently into the Australian cultural cringe debate, which you would have hoped would have been irrelevant ten years on. Somehow it seems even more prevalent in the light of where our sunburnt country now finds itself, what with overseas conflict, the FTA with America and political leadership constantly redefining what it is to be Australian. Less girt by sea and moreso between a rock and a hard place.

However, the performances from the cast are exceptionally non-world weary keeping up an engaging pace, though perhaps they could trust the play and let it breathe a little. There is real consideration of the central themes of the play, along with very attentive detail to the establishment of a family unit. The theatre is said to be a looking glass to human relationships, but too often this is skimped on. Director Jenny Davis, should be applauded for an insightful and sensitive approach to this aspect, particularly with regard to the sisters.

Hotel Sorrento is a fabulous play to meet with for the first time or to fondly rediscover. And Class Act, with their growing reputation of producing solid work in this city, do nothing to spoil that. Shirley Van Sanden, Alinta Carroll and Angelique Malcolm, as the Moynihan sisters, are superbly cast, and having seen all three actresses in various other productions, was knocked out by the maturity with which they dealt with their parts. It is always great to come across a dynamic where the feminine strength of strong women is unleashed upon an audience. Too often faux direction is given as to how women must act towards other women, sabotaging what is most natural, and this is most definitely not the case here.

Another noteworthy performance is Nicholas McRobbie, as Hilary's teenage son. The emotional abundance of his performance is promise of better things to come and should be taken account of by any in the profession who fear there are too few talented actors under 30 in town.
Francesca Waters and Benj DÂ’Addario also provide a terrific foil for Rayson to develop the more intellectual side of her play and these non indulgent actors develop the arguments with clarity and drive. Technical director, Jenny McNae, and the production crew also deserve fine praise for a set and lighting design that provides another character to tell the story, Sorrento, and maximises the Rechabites space to the full.

Hotel Sorrento stands up as a real testament to the strength of family through all the good times and all the horrible times that, paradoxically, all loved ones inflict upon each other whether purposely or not. And with such a vibrant testament in our own coastal town at present, there's no doubt, whether jetlagged or not, that at least one of the characters will connect you back into who and where you are at
this very moment of your very life.
Mike McCall