Small Hotel is a play that defies category, or even explanation. This might be a work of outlandish genius, or a devised end of year A-level project featuring world-class actors (led by Ralph Fiennes and Francesca Annis). It is very funny, although perhaps it doesn’t always mean to be, and well acted, despite the ropey material.
Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the story – more a fever dream – is of a fading TV show host, Larry (Fiennes), stranded in a liminal space with a luminous bar and a Liverpudlian waiter with an eye-patch (Rachel Tucker). His life seems to be flashing before him, or rather circling around him, on Bob Crowley’s stage revolve.
The last in a trio of productions in Fiennes’ season at this theatre, it is a puzzle too strange to solve. Larry is haunted by memories of an overbearing mother (Annis, poisonously brilliant); a teenage lover, Marianne (Rosalind Eleazar, a cool cat) with whom he is reunited 20 years on; and a twin brother (also hilariously played by Fiennes who mostly appears in that role as an enlarged projection).
In a production directed by Holly Race Roughan, screens with crackling static conjure a world of black-and-white film, as do the bursts of tap dance. It seems very much an ode to Hollywood screen classics, but also combines a darkly surreal musical dream world reminiscent of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective with the limbo universe of A Matter of Life and Death.
Beyond that, it is all open to interpretation, especially when randomly declaimed haiku are thrown into the mix. Mother-son tensions bubble dangerously, a romance between Larry and Marianne steams up again and the dancing continues apace. There is a great satirical scene in which Larry interviews Marianne, live on TV. She has become a hotshot Hollywood movie star, but it is rather a stretch to believe she is drawn back to Larry, who has all the energy and charisma of a punctured tyre. It might, of course, be a middle-aged man’s fantasy in this warp of dreams, hallucinations and reality.
Just when you think the last tap dance is done, there is the strangest of Beckettian endings. This is less a play than an experience of sheer, hypnotising madness.
