Play List: Theme - Hotels

Here you can find a selection of theatrical plays that feature hotels. Each play listed includes cast size, genre, the setting and a review. All the plays listed have been tested with my play reading group.

Key:           

Cast Sizes - Small 2-6; Medium 7-12; Large 13+

Copies - Number of copies currently held at the NewSPAL library in Bourne Hall, Spring Street, Ewell, Surrey

Georges Feydeau - Hotel Paradiso 

Genre: Farce                                              Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 8

Setting Passy, a suburb of Paris, circa 1900

It’s a mad French bedroom frolic  of a farce in which an assortment of refined people steals through the halls and rooms of a cheap an unsavoury hotel comically intent on assignations. 

Chaos reigns, there are strange noises., all made worse by a police raid.

See note below on Mortimer’s A Little Hotel on the Side

Rex Frost - Small Hotel

Genre:  Comedy                                                      Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 9

Setting English pub, anytime

After forty years as head waiter at The Jolly Fiddler hotel, poor old Albert  is about to get pushed out. But Albert's got other ideas. Albert will do whatever he can save the jobs of both of himself and the young waitress by manipulating management, staff and guests alike to get their replacement kicked off the job before she's barely started. Some nice character pats, including an irascible cook. It’s a bit thin, a bit passe, but fun to read!

John Osborne - The Hotel in Amsterdam

Genre: Drama, Comedy                               Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 10

Setting Amsterdam, now

Six London friends, whose lives and work are overshadowed by a demanding film producer, flee the country for a weekend to escape his clutches. Safely in a hotel in Amsterdam, the uneasy balance that has existed between them is exposed as the alcohol starts to flow. Both funny and moving.

The play won the Evening Standard Best Play of the Year Award in 1968.

Terence Rattigan - Separate Tables

Genre: Drama                                             Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 28

Setting Bournemouth, post WW2

Two one act place, linked by their location.

In Table by the Window, Martin, a once-rising politician, now turned to drink, dines with his ex-wife. Earlier he was sent to prison for beating her. She, remarried, re-divorced, wants a reconciliation with Martin. Miss Cooper, the hotel manager is Martin’s lover, but helps to bring about a cautious reunion. Table Number Seven, is set about 18 months after the previous play, and deals with the touching friendship between a repressed spinster and Major Pollock, a kindly but bogus man posing as an upper-class retired army officer.

John Mortimer - A Little Hotel on the Side

Genre: farce                                               Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 15

Setting Paris, circa 1900

M. Pinglet fancies his neighbour’s wife, Marcelle Paillardin. The neighbour, M. Paillardin), is an uptight asexual architect. Pinglet’s wife is a dragon. Paillardin’s nephew is an innocent philosophical youth seduced by the Pinglet’s maid. Mathieu is an old acquaintance who turns up with five huge trunks and four young daughters to stay.

They all end up in act two in the sleazy flea-infested hotel, or house of assignation. Paillardin, as an architect, has been appointed to check out tales of hauntings at the hotel. The usual farcical slamming of doors and mistaken identity rules.

It’s another take on the Feydeau Hotel Paradiso, above. Read one or the other, not both!

Neil Simon - Plaza Suite

Genre: Comedy                                           Cast: Mixed, Small Copies 10

Setting New York, Plaza Hotel, 1980s

Three short plays, each set in room 719 of New York's Plaza Hotel

1.    Suburban New Yorkers Sam and Karen Nash are spending the night in the hotel as their house is being painted, but also because it is their wedding anniversary, and they spent their honeymoon there. Karen wants to recreate some romance but  Sam is preoccupied with business matters. Oter issues highlight their fundamental differences .

2.    Womanising Hollywood movie producer Jesse Kiplinger has two hours free during his whirlwind stay in New York, which he wants to fill with a quickie. Muriel knows what Jesse wants, is a bundle of nerves as she continuously questions whether she should have come.

3.    Mimsey has locked herself in the bathroom of the hotel suite, not saying a word to either her father or mother Guests for her wedding and reception are waiting downstairs. Roy and Norma try whatever they can to get Mimsey out of the bathroom while stalling the guests, and their own relationship comes under the microscope

Neil Simon - California Suite

Genre: Comedy, Drama                               Cast: Mixed, Medium Copies 11

Setting California, 1980s

Four playlets set in Suite 203-04, which consists of a living room and an adjoining bedroom with an ensuite bath

"Visitor from New York"

 Hannah Warren is a Manhattan workaholic who flies to Los Angeles to retrieve her teenage daughter Jenny after she leaves home to live with her successful screenwriter father William. The bickering, divorced couple is forced to decide what living arrangements are best for the girl.

"Visitor from Philadelphia”

Conservative, middle-aged businessman Marvin Michaels awakens to discover a prostitute named Bunny unconscious in his bed after consuming a bottle of vodka. With his wife Millie on her way up to the suite, he must find a way to conceal all traces of his uncharacteristic indiscretion.

"Visitors from London"

British actress Diana Nichols, has been nominated for an Oscar. She doesn't have a chance of winning. He marriage is not what she had hoped, her mood fluctuates from hope to panic to despair.

"Visitors from Chicago"

Two affluent couples are taking a much-needed vacation together. Things begin to unravel quickly when Beth is hurt during a tennis match, and one husband accuses the other of causing her injury.

More themes, and more individual plays will be added as they are read.

If you would like me to add a play you have read, please let me know.