Bath-time fun: Mariia Borysiak and Ceejay Shuttleworth. Photo: Jordan Munns
Check into another world when you book yourself into L’Hotel. It’s a head-spinning mix of burlesque, cabaret and circus expertise with artists on stage, dancing around diners’ tables and performing jaw-dropping acrobatics overhead. Add to that live music and an atmosphere that invites you to peek into a racy Parisian establishment, and it’s pretty much guaranteed you will have a fabulous night out.
This return season follows sold-out performances at the Adelaide Festival and the Sydney Opera House (in 2021 and 2022 respectively) and remains as fresh and original as ever.
Created by Craig Ilott and Stuart Couzens, it brings together a wealth of talent. The show begins with ‘waitresses’ breaking into dance routines between the diners’ tables, all executed with amazing precision given the tight space available (and credit here to choreographer, Lucas Newland).
We begin to meet the hotel ‘staff’, headlined in this instance by John Waters as the manager. Most of them are somehow thwarted in love, which gives rise to some great songs and performances from the ensemble. The two bellhops – singer/songwriter Brendan Maclean and aerialist Masha Terentieva – both of whom are excellent, give a cohesion to the thwarted love theme as well as knock-out performances. After you’ve seen Terentieva’s gravity-defying routine with a luggage trolley, you’ll never view that piece of hotel equipment in quite the same way again.
Particularly memorable, too, are Mariia Borysiak and Ceejay Shuttleworth as hotel maids, who are only too eager to distract themselves from their mundane housekeeping chores – and of course you need to shed your clothes if they get wet in the bath, do you not?
Then there is the hotel’s maitre’d, played by Danik Abishev, whose sense of balance atop a precariously placed ladder will have you holding your breath; Bentley Rebel’s unexpected and wildly hilarious pole-dancing/striptease number; and Waters’ moving rendition of ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’.
There are other equally spectacular acts, but best to see for yourselves. This is one of those shows that makes ordinary mortals feel physically inadequate, such are the acrobatic and dancing skills of the performers. In short, L’Hotel is 75 minutes of non-stop entertainment, filled with playful humour and great music, circus skills and burlesque eroticism.
Until 27 July
Tickets: $89 to $163 (for a VIP table with food and wine)
https://www.foundrytheatre.com.au/shows/l-hotel
