3 – 18 October

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s beguiling and sometimes mesmeric play, centred on the life of a faltering chat show host, conjures a contemporary take on Dante’s 14^th century poem Inferno, in which he describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell, as some kind of holding pen for departing souls, condemned to suffer harm by living in a perpetual state of desire.

Commissioned especially to produce a new work for the Ralph Fiennes season at the Theatre Royal, Lenkiewicz has clearly enjoyed collaging ideas to serve a morbid, but at times hilarious story – bathos and pathos punching with equal weight – threading together the distilled power of haiku poems to capture evaporating moments, with tap as a dance macabre, and Death in the form of a black patch-wearing waitress (Rachel Tucker).

Placing the action in a setting inspired by the bittersweet 1930’s Rodgers and Hart song There’s a Small Hotel, she has conjured a dystopian world in which its inhabitants find themselves in a state of emotional stasis while their physical worlds are collapsing. By contrast, she references trees and their silent power to communicate and support each other.

Ralph Fiennes plays Larry, an ageing C-list celebrity talk show host. A man in decline, his show needs somebody sensational to up the ratings. An old flame, Marianne, is in town (Rosalind Eleazor), a former lover who has gone on to win Oscar and Tony nominations as an actress.

Could she be persuaded to come on the show for a rare interview? And what could be the consequences on camera? Fiennes presents as a man floundering, lightly tethered to a dull marriage while deluded by his prospects with a woman two decades his junior.

Larry’s life has been dominated by an alcoholic mother, who refers to herself fancifully as Athena, and his twin brother Richard, who is suffering from a form of long Covid and an acute auto-immune disorder after swimming in a river poisoned by sewage. He lives alone in a wooded area, condemned to remain alone for fear of further infection. With longer hair and a beard, and presenting as the quieter, more sensitive sibling, Fiennes doubles as Larry’s twin. Clever use of video by Luke Halls enables us to see him in seamless mobile conversations with his brother.

At the play’s rotten core sits the mother, the self-styled Athena, who has herself been meted out cruel injustices in her youth. She’s only too happy to pass on the damage. Francesca Annis puts in a wonderfully crafted performance as the alcohol and dementia raddled matriarch dissing her sons with abandon – of Richard: “Romantics don’t get fucked.” Of Larry’s show: “It’s just celebrity shags!” Annis brilliantly inhabits a woman at the point of zero joy, where the pain simply outweighs the desire to go on, yet Lenkiewicz gives her some of the funniest lines to keep us on our toes, winning back a modicum of sympathy.

Set designer Bob Crowley has made the most of a rotating stage on which characters ghost in and out, and scenes can emerge – a hotel bedroom and bar, Larry’s TV set, an outdoor ATM machine. Sally Ferguson’s lighting accentuates a melancholic, nostalgic mood, with effective use of filmic ‘noise’ a nod to ageing celluloid.

Circular in its format, Small Hotel ends with further examination of its beginning, leading us to feel that, throughout, we might have been witnessing a dream or a series of flashbacks, where final reckonings have been made akin to Dante’s vision. Yet Lenkiewicz, unlike Dante, leaves us with one tiny piece of hope – an extended hand held by another, like two tree roots entwining to make connection.

★★★★☆  Simon Bishop, 14 October 2025

Photography credit:  Marc Brenner