Theatre Review: Electric Hotel at the Harbourside

Thursday 20th May 2010

This is a Crackerjack review of Electric Hotel. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

Crackerjack rating: 9 / 10.

There’s something different about Bristol’s harbourside tonight but I just can’t put my finger on it... Oh, that’s it, there’s a whopping great four storey hotel that wasn’t there this morning…

Rather than Travel Lodge’s new sideline in rapid rise hotels, this was all part of Bristol’s contemporary theatre festival Mayfest.

Electric Hotel is the festival’s most ambitious and high profile event to date – a performance in a uniquely designed four-storey hotel that has been erected in a matter of hours on Waterfront Square next to Lloyds TSB amphitheatre.

Made up of six shipping containers, the awesome temporary structure is 20 metres wide by 14 metres high and has a colossal total load of 48 tonnes, requiring 40-ton cranes to transport it. It resembles an Eastern Bloc hotel and looks strangely out of place yet at the same time integrated into its surroundings. And as the sun goes down, it is brought to vivid life through lighting, dance and sound.

The performance piece has been a big hit at Brighton Festival and it’s real coup for Bristol, but would it be any good or just a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

The assembled audience obviously expected the former. There was a real buzz about the harbourside as people milled about, quaffing drinks from the Hotel’s fully functioning bar, which was open before the show serving the 400-strong audience. Perhaps surprisingly, there was a diverse mix of people - not just the usual throng of students, ageing hippies and chin-stroking luvvies.

Then, as night fell over the harbourside, the audience took their seats and the hotel came to life. Slowly the blinds rose on different hotel rooms to reveal their occupants as well as a cocktail lounge on the top floor complete with customers and a singer.

Electric Hotel invites the audience to play the compelling role of voyeur, watching events as they evolve from afar. Think Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window meets contemporary dance.

Sitting on the outside looking in, we snatch glimpses of the do-not-disturb lives unfolding behind the floor to ceiling windows. We eavesdrop on the residents of the hotel in their private rooms- some arguing, so dancing, some working, some up to no good.

Not only are we watching this curious spectacle, we are also hearing it. The audience has been given headphones with ‘binaural sound technology’. Whatever that means, it works. It's as if the drama is taking place inside your head and your eyes are drawn to the appropriate room. There's the crunch of feet on gravel, the ripple of the swimming pool, the clatter of keys in a lock, the whisper of a towel dropping to the floor – all heard with amazing clarity.

The notion of watching a performance in a public space at night in silence with the crowd around you is undoubtedly thrilling and while we may not 'understand' it all, it is a gripping spectacle.

Of course, this isn’t for everybody and yes, it has a lick of the pretentious brush, but this is moving, atmospheric stuff and yet another talking point for a city that's fast becoming the place to see challenging, imaginative theatre.

Natalie Hale

This is a Crackerjack review of Electric Hotel. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.