Reviews

This piece was first conceived (pardon the pun) for Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival in 2013 and performed as a moved reading to rave reviews. Not unlike The Vagina Monologues in tone, the text was similarly derived from a multitude of interviews with children (aged 4-40) of same-sexed couples. To emphasise the authenticity of the dialogue, the cast maintain a book-in-hand prop throughout.  This updated version also includes reactions to the landmark political events of the past year.

The show begins, appropriately, with an immobile, monumental female figure seated on a podium.  This is, after all, a show about queens – or Queens - every kind of queen: ‘royal’ queens, film star queens, queens of pop, drag queens, warrior queens, even queen bees…. 

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.

I have often seen Andrew McGrail perform for GSOV, but this is the first time I’ve seen him direct and I was impressed. It’s difficult to find something new to add to this old warhorse, but Andrew certainly did that.

It opened with a prologue taken from the film “Topsy Turvy”, detailing the events that led up to the creation of The Mikado. Sullivan, naturally, was played by the MD, Timothy John Wilson, who then took his place in the pit. It was interesting, but I’m not sure it added that much.