With its cinematic opening credits and references to film noir, it soon becomes obvious that Hotel Methuselah draws as much from the history of cinema as it does the traditions of theatre. And with its innovative use of projection, such referencing has obviously been put to good use.
The live element of the performance is viewed through a letterbox as wide as the stage, showing the performers only from shoulder to knee, whilst projections are made onto both the front of this screen and the back of the stage area as well. Such a set-up allows for a some wonderful effects; recordings of talking heads are perfectly synchronised with live bodies, backdrops spin, scroll past, and are shown from a multitude of different angles (with the performers moving their bodies to match these changing perspectives), whilst the grainy black and white footage interacts in complex ways with the colours of the live performance, asking us to wonder about the relationship between that which is real in the present and that which now lies in the past.
Time and our relationship to it is central to the narrative as well. Set in a hotel in an unnamed war zone, we see a number of encounters between Harry the night porter and the guests of the hotel. Harry can’t remember anything previous to his current shift however, and so when these encounters are repeated with slight variation, he is unable to recollect anything more than the vaguest of feelings. Threatening undertones are present throughout many of these interactions; sex and violence are never far away, and the tension generated leads to confusion in both Harry and the audience alike.
It’s in this confusion that perhaps one of the chief problems of the show lies: though the audience’s lack of understanding works well by bringing us closer to the perspective of Harry, in the performance’s explorations of time, memory and repetition, there is a sense that something profound is being suggested, but this confusion (along with aspects of the dialogue – which particularly in its description of sexual encounters can veer towards cliché) never allows for an easy way in.
Of course, theatre does not have to be easy, nor should we expect meaning to be clearly presented before us, though in the context of the barrage of theatrical encounters that is the Edinburgh Fringe, Hotel Methuselah suffers from not having enough space to be properly digested.