The Last Hotel review – a searingly powerful new chamber opera

For a festival that staged full Ring cycles in the not-so-distant past, Edinburgh is low on opera this year. The International festival’s new Irish director, Fergus Linehan, is a theatre man who openly admits to being mind-boggled by the cost of full-scale operatic productions. If and how he squares that circle in future seasons remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, his theatre instincts have served him well in presenting this potently compact, searingly powerful new chamber work by two of Ireland’s foremost creative voices, playwright Enda Walsh and composer Donnacha Dennehy.

The Last Hotel is a dark drama in which death hangs over every move – the titular hotel is a shabby establishment where guests go to kill themselves. Walsh’s libretto (he also directs) is devastating in its indictment of societal preoccupations, heartbreaking in its portrayal of loneliness and loveless relationships. He’s a master of loading up innocuous lines – “two keys will be fine”; “coupons to gain access to the internet” – with tragic banality.

One character can dream only of house extensions, another sings dismally of corporate events and eating disorders. Dialogue begins in awkward speech then switches abruptly to song when we enter the murky hyperreality of the hotel. It’s jarring, but it works.

View image in fullscreen

The instrumental score is what crept deepest under my skin: The Last Hotel unleashes a thrilling musical energy. Dennehy’s 12-piece ensemble includes accordion, electric guitar and heavy percussion, and thrums with a savage, unstoppable groove, shouting the unspeakable, seething with emotions that characters are too numb to express. It’s propulsive, gritty and rich. Dublin’s Crash Ensemble and conductor André de Ridder deliver it with tremendous guts and agility. During scenes in the hotel’s seedy bar, Dennehy splices loudly distorted pop music in with a brutal lack of ceremony. B*Witched have never sounded so galling.

If there’s a weak link it’s the vocal writing, which too often defaults to soaring lines above frenetic backdrop, but the cast never lets the tension drop. As the bullish Husband (characters are generically named), Robin Adams parodies Dennehy’s post-minimalist language by twitching at every repetition when driven to breaking point. Claudia Boyle’s Woman sings a mesmerising deathbed elegy, perhaps a nod to Ophelia’s Song, while Katherine Manley gives a silky-voiced, acutely-observed performance as the Wife. Mikel Murfi is the silent Caretaker who witnesses from the sidelines with a nervous intensity that’s bound to explode. When it finally does, the parting image is stark indeed.