The Independent London Newspaper
8th February 2012

Letters

Theatre:- Review - Hotel Sorrento at Cock Tavern Theatre

Published: 02 September 2010
by JACK COURTNEY O'CONNOR

“KNOCK, knock, who’s there?” “The ghost of Hamlet’s father.” “Cut out the bull... I don’t believe in ghosts!”

It is the contention of award-winning Aussie writer Hannie Rayson that an Australian could not have written Hamlet. 
That said, she has taken on the cultural cringe of her country   (or “alienation” in sociological terms) in the UK premiere of her 1990 play Hotel Sorrento. 
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Meg (Alix Longman) returns to Australia after a 10-year gap with her posh Pommy husband Edwin (Alec Walters). 
She has come home to be re-united with her sisters – Pippa (Shelley Lang), a high-flying New York-based executive, and Hilary (Maggie Daniels), who never left Sorrento, their family home and hotel outside Melbourne (she stayed with their widower father). 
 
The two younger, successful sisters obviously have some dark secret which will be unravelled in what becomes almost a different play – a dysfunctional family melodrama.  
The socio-political theme that runs through the piece becomes diluted with the emotional entanglement and sibling rivalry which comes to a head in the last act. 
The play has dated tremendously: the Shelley-quoting Englishman, Edwin, now seems like something out of the Ark, as does the left-wing Aussie “New Man” Dick (Ed Dehn),  a David Williamson  cut-out. 
This  piece is ­performed extensively Down Under and appears on university syllabuses, dumping Ray Lawler’s play Summer of the Seven­teenth Doll and beyond into the cultural waste bin. 
 
Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s well-paced production boasts strong performances and he has added much visual interest in what is a limited space.   
The name of Meg’s Booker-listed semi-autobiographical novel is Melancholy, and, as we are informed by Marge (Ania Marson), the exiled artist/narrator: “Australians think melancholy is another word for depression.”
Until September 11
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