Sporting a much shorter hairstyle than is evident from the promotional material (so don’t be taken aback), writer/performer Karin McCracken is one half of the New Zealand Aotearoa creative partnership, EBKM. The other half is co-creator Eleanor Bishop, who directed the company’s RISING show, Heartbreak Hotel, starring McCracken and Simon Leary.
EBKM has been making work since 2017, winning awards and touring shows around the world. Its productions are informed by McCracken’s previous experience as a lawyer and as a specialist sexual violence prevention educator, but, that background notwithstanding, Heartbreak Hotel is a much more intimate, personalised work.
She begins the show by asking two questions: the second utterly frivolous and designed to lighten the mood, and the first rhetorical, in that she doesn’t want an answer vocalised by the audience, but she instead intuits the response by spending a few minutes gazing along the rows, checking out every pair of eyes to ascertain how deeply the concept of heartbreak is resonating with the crowd individually.
This gives rise to two thoughts. One, this bit of the show must take a really long time if it’s a large venue or crowd and, two, you can’t help but suspect she gets the same reply anyway at every performance. In that in any group of people there are going to be at least a few suffering from a coeur brisé. Heartbreak. Pretty much everyone has been there at some point. And if you haven’t been that unlucky in love, the suspicion is you’re either too young/inexperienced yet or, to be honest, a hard-hearted sociopath who is always the one that does the leaving. Gaily, without so much as a look back in the destroyed one’s direction.
Heartbreak Hotel wants to examine how those hearts get broken, what is the physiological reality of the condition, how it transpires between two people and how it can be addressed or even, hopefully, mended.
To do this McCracken, ably assisted by the very versatile Leary, offers a serious of vignettes – scenes from a (not yet) marriage that show the cracks and then the inevitable, plus others in which Leary plays a potential new partner. The latter are some of the highlights of the show – illustrating in hilarious but toe-curling detail the excruciating awkwardness of the dating scene, complete with astutely choreographed movements that brilliantly transform a couple of people standing on a somewhat empty stage into a pair ill at ease and surrounded by a jostling crowd.
McCracken is almost forensic in her deconstruction of the psyches and motivations of a couple who can no longer be together, but are still fundamentally joined at the hip. But it’s always going to be a challenge to bring something new to this topic. Relationships and the way they fracture have been the spine and heartbeat of theatre and, indeed, all art for ever. Othello didn’t get upset about that handkerchief because he thought Desdemona had a cold…
To address this, McCracken injects humour, the odd song (while first warning the audience that she’s not a trained singer) and a bit of synth work (while also first warning the audience that she’s not an expert and only knows six chords).
Read: Theatre review: POV, RISING, Showroom Arts Centre Melbourne
Trained in specific disciplines or not, McCracken is a talented and assured performer, matched every step of the way by the impressive Leary. An ambient soundscape (partly produced by that baby synth) and intriguing production design (mostly limited to hanging signs surrounding the space with rolling text anticipating the scenes) do augment the performance well.
But perhaps in the end, the audience’s appreciation of the material will rest on how recently their own experience of heartbreak has occurred (if at all). On an individual micro level, Heartbreak Hotel could be an absolute panacea, but for those currently in something more of an equanimous state of mind, other considerations may distract.
Such as ‘it may be named after one of his greatest hits, but Elvis got a bit of short shrift in this, didn’t he?’ or ‘how did the theatrical profession come to a place where two actors in a studio sized venue still utilise head mics? Whatever happened to projection?’
Heartbreak Hotel, The Showroom, Arts Centre Melbourne
Created by EBKM
Writer: Karin McCracken
Director: Eleanor Bishop
Production and Light Design: Filament Eleven 11
Sound Designer: Te Aihe Butler
Producer: Melanie Hamilton
Touring Operator: Peter Davison
Cast: Karin McCracken, Simon Leary
Tickets: $44-$49
Heartbreak Hotel runs at The Showroom, Arts Centre Melbourne until 22 June 2025 as part of RISING.
