Hotel Sorrento

Three reuniting sisters focus involuntarily upon their joint history, examining their lives’ integrity and struggling with their difficult past and present choices and with what each is to the others.  By this means, Hotel Sorrento uses the sisters’ particular circumstances and characters to shed light on the Australian psyche as its playwright saw it at the time of writing.

First performed in 1990, the play depicts, in director Denny Lawrence’s words, “a nation constantly questioning the nature of being Australian and interrogating our ties to the Mother Country and our alliance with the U.S.” — a depiction that has dated only in the play’s incessant worrying at themes of Aussie male sloppiness and insensitivity and of universal Aussie cultural banality.

Discussion of such themes was trendy and probably useful at the time: such sloppiness and banality as the play critiques tire quickly, of course; more importantly, they limit enrichment of lives, learning, and relationships.  On the other hand, so does harping on personal deficits well beyond their expiry date.  From that point of view, a light refurbishment of Hotel Sorrento, replacing now clichéd tropes with a few snappier (and less explicit) observations relating to a society that values cheapness, competitiveness, and social conformity above all other considerations, could renew its shine.

The play is nonetheless an undoubted success.  HIT Productions’s entire cast and crew brought Hotel Sorrento to vivid life with emotional conviction and engaging nuance, allowing the audience to travel part of the road of the characters lives’ with them.  Crystal-clear articulation delivered nearly every word perfectly to the entire auditorium; and detailed (and frequently changed) sets and a variety of beautiful lighting well conveyed the seaside town’s changeless character.  All in all, the quality of production and direction and the professionalism of its actors have made of the play an engaging storytelling vehicle worthy of notice.

John P. Harvey

Images: [L–R] Jenny Seedsman and Mike Smith, and [L–R] Saxon Gray, Dennis Coard, Joanne Booth, and Ruth Caro, in Hotel Sorrento. Photographer: Cathy Ronalds.

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