Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
Heartbreak Hotel is for the young hearts, the old hearts, and the broken hearts. From acclaimed Wellington-based theatre company EBKM, who brought their ground-breaking Gravity & Grace to Circa Theatre last year, Heartbreak Hotel tracks a woman’s broken heart in a wrenching and relatable journey that’s studded with classic break-up songs and razor-sharp observations on the physiology of love.
Karen McCracken and Simon Leary have the natural chemistry of friends and long-time collaborators. They play with each other easily as any combination of their characters; McCracken giving a wonderful, human complexity to her unnamed any-person-going-through-a-breakup role and Simon morphing seamlessly between ensemble characters. The distinctions that Leary can make between his characters without having to have bold costume or physical choices for each is a testament to his ability. He keeps it simple and doesn’t have to do much to convey each different visitor into McCracken's story.
The show jumps between performing for the audience and performing to the audience, with McCracken sometimes taking on the role of a host or synth musician delivering some scenes through song covers.
The show includes a very realistic spat between partners while their dinner is on its way that I found weirdly nostalgic. The scene toed the exact balance of hyper-emotional and humanely imperfect and withdrawn—characters shamefully sharing too much of some things but not enough of others. It reminds me of past relationships ending, the almost comedic desperation, grovelling and backtracking that comes with the end of one's world dawning upon them.
Of all Leary’s characters, the accountant is a standout for me as a poignant metaphor for finally going through all the hard bits. Our hero is a freelancer and was keeping receipts of her year (there’s something to be said about “keeping receipts” about a person—which she did when she brought up the coffee plunger) for tax reasons. Diligently having processed all of her incomings and outgoings she was pretty sure, like most financially-nervous freelancers, that she was to come out worse: owing the government money. The point, in my mind, of this epilogue is to see our character come out the other end and realise that yes, even though she was expecting the worst it just so happens to be going well. She has come out net positive as Leary’s accountant tries to explain.
The lighting design (by Filament eleven 11) exists as a responsive element of the show's themes, reimagining the lights in the context of what our hero is going through. Throughout the show there are key colours of rose-tinted pink, melancholic blue, stark white, the atmospheric and looming darkness in the room without the lights and at one point a toxic, high energy green. What inspires me about the lighting design is its multiple interpretations of blue. For a long time through the show, blue light is given to scenes alongside a pink, to silhouette a sadness underneath the characters’ ill-fated and romantic notion that it’ll just be fine after a set amount of time. In one of the final moments of the show, the blue that spreads across the LED panels is that of the sky with clouds drifting slowly across it. This new perspective on the colour is symbolic of the different perspectives that characters have on the break up: for some, the sad end of a person's whole world, but for others looking in there is an entire new world opening up.
Another way the lighting design captures my adoration is how the choice of light lets us see really clearly each LED and pixel. This is particularly relevant against the scientific sections of the piece, where a person's physiological response to what is happening during a breakup is broken down into its smallest components in order to understand a larger picture. In one of the final moments, a lone bar from the series is illuminated all in white evoking a low-battery symbol, one stark piece of energy in an array that is otherwise spent and dark.
This show is having a limited run and is only on until Saturday 25th of October, more info here. Do yourself a favour and go along (but maybe not right after a breakup… I had friends that have done that and they’ve each said “Yeah, maybe too soon?”).
The show jumps between performing for the audience and performing to the audience, with McCracken sometimes taking on the role of a host or synth musician delivering some scenes through song covers.
The show includes a very realistic spat between partners while their dinner is on its way that I found weirdly nostalgic. The scene toed the exact balance of hyper-emotional and humanely imperfect and withdrawn—characters shamefully sharing too much of some things but not enough of others. It reminds me of past relationships ending, the almost comedic desperation, grovelling and backtracking that comes with the end of one's world dawning upon them.
Of all Leary’s characters, the accountant is a standout for me as a poignant metaphor for finally going through all the hard bits. Our hero is a freelancer and was keeping receipts of her year (there’s something to be said about “keeping receipts” about a person—which she did when she brought up the coffee plunger) for tax reasons. Diligently having processed all of her incomings and outgoings she was pretty sure, like most financially-nervous freelancers, that she was to come out worse: owing the government money. The point, in my mind, of this epilogue is to see our character come out the other end and realise that yes, even though she was expecting the worst it just so happens to be going well. She has come out net positive as Leary’s accountant tries to explain.
The lighting design (by Filament eleven 11) exists as a responsive element of the show's themes, reimagining the lights in the context of what our hero is going through. Throughout the show there are key colours of rose-tinted pink, melancholic blue, stark white, the atmospheric and looming darkness in the room without the lights and at one point a toxic, high energy green. What inspires me about the lighting design is its multiple interpretations of blue. For a long time through the show, blue light is given to scenes alongside a pink, to silhouette a sadness underneath the characters’ ill-fated and romantic notion that it’ll just be fine after a set amount of time. In one of the final moments of the show, the blue that spreads across the LED panels is that of the sky with clouds drifting slowly across it. This new perspective on the colour is symbolic of the different perspectives that characters have on the break up: for some, the sad end of a person's whole world, but for others looking in there is an entire new world opening up.
Another way the lighting design captures my adoration is how the choice of light lets us see really clearly each LED and pixel. This is particularly relevant against the scientific sections of the piece, where a person's physiological response to what is happening during a breakup is broken down into its smallest components in order to understand a larger picture. In one of the final moments, a lone bar from the series is illuminated all in white evoking a low-battery symbol, one stark piece of energy in an array that is otherwise spent and dark.
This show is having a limited run and is only on until Saturday 25th of October, more info here. Do yourself a favour and go along (but maybe not right after a breakup… I had friends that have done that and they’ve each said “Yeah, maybe too soon?”).