The Blue Angel Hotel

Overview

Things don't tend to go well at motels in the middle of nowhere. They are always closeted and vulnerable in their isolation, with a Lynchian surreality leeching in from the edges. And when your motel is in the part of the middle of nowhere that's next to a high-security prison, the threats present themselves quite vividly.

So it is at the Blue Angel Hotel, which serves as a base for visiting wives and girlfriends and is tended by ultimate prisoner 'groupie' Grace (Gael Ballantyne). A few guests tumble in: regular Vic (Jacqui Livingston), a psychiatrist who may have reached a very favourable assessment of one of her patients; new face Angela (Eloise Snape), who is here for the same parole hearing but with a wholly different perspective to argue; Ray (Bill Conn), the bus driver with a hopeless devotion to Grace; and Hiro (Takaya Honda), a random blow-in who speaks no English and whom Grace allows to breach her usual 'no tourists' policy.

There's an exotic mural on the wall, sirens in the distance, and, occasionally, an otherworldly dance that comes on with a dimming of the lights. Like some other famous hotels, it's the kind of place from which you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Katie Pollock's new play is concerned with unpacking the psychological factors that drive some women into the arms of men who they know to have committed acts of violence, and it does so with sensitivity, creativity, and nerve. Not one of the female characters is the stereotype you may be expecting to meet — in fact, they mostly emphasise their dissociation from the nebulous group of devoted partners and MWIs (Met While Incarcerateds) that Grace captains. You get a nice echo of their different relationship motivations as they imprint them on the passive stranger Hiro — Grace seeking someone to look after; Vic, someone to provide a shot of danger and excitement; Angela, someone gentle and protective. The tension between the women is a riveting and revealing source of drama.

There are parts of The Blue Angel Hotel that are a touch overdone: The foreboding setting is well established without the prison bars dripping into the lobby from overhead, and some of the script's asides serve up characters' psychologies a bit too bluntly, denying us the fun of getting to know them as the play progresses. Other, more symbolic asides are welcome and intriguing. After all, when we travel to an inn at the end of the world, we want the walls between the everyday and the metaphysical to be thinned.

Photo by Zorica Purlija.