L’Hotel joins the ranks of interesting plays about characters being dead and not knowing it: Outward Bound, where a group of seven passengers meet in the lounge of an ocean liner and have no idea where they are bound. And Anne Meara’s After Play,where two couples arrive at a trendy Manhattan restaurant having just come from an evening at the theater.
Cross-pollinate this with the assembling of famous people from the past, as in Steve Allen’s “Meeting of the Minds” and Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile.
Ed Dixon’s witty and stylish script presents novelist Victor Hugo, playwright Oscar Wilde, actress Sarah Bernhardt, dance innovator Isadora Duncan, composer Gioachino Rossini, and rock star Jim Morrison in an ornate hotel in Paris where they are being served breakfast by a sprightly waiter.
The unnamed hotel is next door to the famous Parisian cemetery Père Lachaise. Gradually we, and they, come to realize that they actually are entombed in that necropolis. Père Lachaise in real life was the burial place of immortals such as Moliere, Balzac, Chopin and Pissarro. Not all of these people stayed there; Hugo’s remains were moved to the Panthéon and Rossini’s to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. But that doesn’t disturb the play’s thrust.
Dixon shows the cast members feuding and trading quips and insults. During reflective moments, they debate the meaning of art and artistic immortality. Their accomplishments and personalities emerge—Hugo (Sam Tsoutsouvas) is grumpy and doctrinaire, Wilde (Brent Harris) is irreverent and mouths witty aphorisms, Morrison (Daniel Hartley) is unruly and fixated on sex and drugs.
Rossini (Tony Triano) is presented as a comic foil, a target of ridicule from his peers. Sarah Bernhardt (Deanne Lorette) is shown as besotted by the charismatic Morrison, while Duncan (Kati Brazda) is graceful and free-spirited. Evan Zes is a humorous standout as The Waiter, displaying impressive physical dexterity.
The costumes by David C. Woolard are magnificent, from Hugo’s frock coat to Morrison’s tight leather trousers. The art nouveau hotel is resplendent with stained glass, an elegant chandelier and an imposing curved stairway, all designed by James Noone.
My only quibble is that the plot does not develop in a gratifying way. A young woman (Erika Cuenca) repeatedly appears outside the hotel as she visits the grave of her grandfather. We are kept in the dark as to whom he may be. One, and only one, of the hotel’s denizens can be liberated, and that occurs at the finale, but this appears to be an arbitrary device. The play remains as a fascinating exploration even though the conclusion is weak.
