'Heartbreak Hotel' Off-Broadway review — heartbreak feels good at a show like this
Read our review of Heartbreak Hotel off Broadway, created by New Zealand theatre duo EBKM (Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken) and making its U.S. debut.
Summary
- Heartbreak Hotel is a play with music about an unnamed narrator's journey to move on from a six-year relationship
- The show features entertaining performances and a stirring soundtrack of beloved breakup anthems
- The show is recommended for fans of TV shows like Fleabag; stage shows like Becky Shaw and Maybe Happy Ending; and solo theatregoers
Heartbreak Hotel isn't an Elvis musical, despite what writer/performer Karin McCracken's fringed lavender suit, her rendition of the same-named Elvis song toward the top of the show, and her co-star Simon Leary's very pelvis-forward dancing may suggest. No, this Hotel feels, aesthetically, much more of the '80s or '90s, with a pre-show playlist of those decades' classic heartbreak anthems and LED panels sporting colorful designs that make us feel like we're in an old Windows screensaver. It's apt. Like a computer on standby, so too is McCracken's narrator, as though the past and present and future have all collapsed in on her and she's stuck in an aimless, liminal void.
She just went through a breakup, after all.
After six years, no less, and it takes another six to finally move on (staying friends with her ex doesn't help). That journey is compressed into 75 entertaining minutes in Heartbreak Hotel, which sits somewhere between sitcom, theatrical concert, and memory play. Scenes of the narrator going on ill-fated Tinder dates, falling down rabbit holes about Takotsubo syndrome, and replaying the messy end of her relationship are punctuated with her stripped-back, synth-forward — there's the '80s again! — renditions of even more broken-heart ballads. (The narrator took up the synth because she heard a creative pursuit could help "enhance emotional regulation and resilience." You be the judge of how that's going.)
McCracken and Leary are nimble and endearing actors, and Leary seamlessly inhabits various characters via subtle shifts in physicality, all of whom have an easy chemistry with McCracken's narrator even in moments of tension. Their performances feel lived-in, which makes sense considering that they've already done the show in Melbourne and London before bringing it stateside. Director Eleanor Bishop, who created Heartbreak Hotel with McCracken as the duo EBKM, similarly employs a light but assured touch to her staging.
A penultimate scene that launches us from the liminal into the almost fully surreal, with pitch-darkness and the disembodied voice of the narrator's mom, is a bit tonally jarring, but Heartbreak Hotel ends back on track with a terrific little scene of the narrator getting her tax return. Heartbreak may be universal, but Heartbreak Hotel is at its strongest when it doesn't overtly strive to remind us of that. It's the specific minutiae of one life infused with heartbreak that hit the most resonant beats.
Heartbreak Hotel summary
An unnamed narrator reeling from a difficult breakup turns to friends, music, science, Tinder, and more as she moves through the various stages of heartbreak, from denial to depression to aggression, and finds a way forward.
Heartbreak Hotel is created by New Zealand-based theatre duo EBKM, composed of director Eleanor Bishop and writer/performer Karin McCracken.
What to expect at Heartbreak Hotel
"Is anyone here heartbroken, or grieving, or otherwise bereft?" McCracken asks the audience at the top of the show. You don't have to answer aloud, though you can. She intermittently checks in with us and how we're feeling, or whether we recognize the songs she's covering. If not — they're by the likes of Sinéad O'Connor, Bonnie Raitt, and of course, Elvis Presley — I'd highly recommend them.
While feeling like the inside of a Windows screensaver, Heartbreak Hotel also simultaneously feels like a nightclub in its off-hours, and someone's bedroom. (Production design is by Filament Eleven 11.) It's nebulous but confined, with a lingering feeling of emptiness even when McCracken isn't alone on stage. One could say it's not unlike heartbreak itself.
Who should see Heartbreak Hotel
- Fleabag fans will find some echoes in Heartbreak Hotel, namely the show's dryly funny, confessional tone and portrait of a person who doesn't have it emotionally together.
- Heartbreak Hotel is a great show to see by yourself (whether or not you're solo because you're actually going through heartbreak) if you're looking for a breezy way to spend an afternoon.
- Heartbreak Hotel could make a great double feature with Broadway's Becky Shaw — a dark comedy about a blind date gone wrong — or else a bittersweet musical that hits the highs and lows of romance, like Maybe Happy Ending, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), or even Moulin Rouge! (which, like Heartbreak Hotel, has one banger after another).
Learn more about Heartbreak Hotel off Broadway
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. With visual vibrance and refreshing honesty, Heartbreak Hotel pumps fresh blood into the breakup narrative.
Photo credit: Heartbreak Hotel off Broadway. (Photos by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
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