One of the odd things about the place where you live is that you never get to see inside its hotels, unlike the places you only visit. Until, that is, the Gob Squad perform their tremendous Room Service in your home town.

I have to tell you, the Park Plaza Hotel on Maid Marian Way is dead posh inside. Just before 10pm, a speedy lift whisked us up to the 11th floor where an over-priced bar has one of the best views across Nottingham you'll ever (or never) see. We were taken into the next room where dozens of bean-bags and chairs were set out in front of four large televisions. At the back of the room, a team of people with laptops and video mixing desks lurked ominously and, somewhere below us, four frustrated commercial travellers were spending another lonely night in stark hotel rooms and they needed our help to make it through.

Each television fades up to show one of the four characters. Each of them has their own way of coping. Bastian imagines sexual encounters in his room; Elyce decorates the walls with toilet paper; Simon forms nipple clamps from coat-hangers and finally Sarah imagines what life would be like if she were able to make friends.

If you've ever travelled with work, you will know what it's like to sit out a soulless night in a hotel room in a city where you know no-one and have to while away the hours. This is, you will know unless you are one of the social adequates who can strike up conversations with strangers.

The four act and talk simultaneously, giving us a choice of who to watch. At first, Bastian is most prominent, proudly obsessing about the detail of each room, the individually scented air conditioning, the numerous functions of the telephone and the mass produced 'art' on the walls. I must confess, I was ahead of him, who chose the frosted glass doors for the bathroom that would give anyone who happened to be in your room a silhouette-view of you taking a dump whilst you are teleconferencing on the bathroom's handily positioned phone? The obsessive attention to detail in the room's design becomes the subject of Bastian's, and my, obsession.

Anyway, Elyce is next, wearing shiny tracksuit bottoms, she conducts a meticulous search of the room for stains and pubic hairs. Simon's sexual experimentation is followed by Sara's demonstration of her different bed-lying positions.

Before I go on to what happened next, I have to tell you about the hotel's urinals. To me, and perhaps you if you are male, urinals are made of white porcelain and are full of peculiar blue cubes and fag-ends. But not in the Park Plaza, they are shiny chrome cone-shaped objects. More importantly, they have little metal mirrors positioned at about chest height, so that as you look down, you see yourself pissing from the front. That's not all, as you walk away, they notice you are gone and flush themselves. If this is how the other half lives, where do I join?

Where was I? Oh yes, at this point two drunk, little-black-dressed girls stagger noisily into the room. A major annoyance at most plays, but a godsend here as the hitherto unnoticed telephone in the centre of the room begins to ring. Who's calling? It's Simon, wanting to play Truth or Dare with the audience and thankfully it's one of these girls (whether or not they were stooges is still a matter of debate) who picks up the phone. This audience interaction is frightening but incredibly engaging. We get to direct events at times and the actors' improvisation is superb. There is no actor-audience divide here, the characters speak directly to us and don't mind us seeing them moving their cameras. Yet, the suspension of disbelief which lets you think of them as real people is never broken, thanks mainly to the excellent acting.

I almost forgot to mention the taps in the gents. They are mixer taps but with this weird joystick to control them. Forward and back for amount of water and left-right for temperature. An incredible piece of design and absolutely impossible to use without either scalding or freezing your hands.

Anyway, for a play about boredom this piece in incredibly compelling. Although I expected to leave around midnight, I was there to the bitter end at 2:40am and never bored, even if I was a bit sleepy. This is what theatre is like when someone decides to break all the rules and Gob Squad have made it into an amazing experience. The hotel was good, too...

Room Service was performed at the Park Plaza Hotel from 5-7 May 2005. Gob Squad return to perform 'Super Night Shot' at Nottingham Playhouse on 17th and 18th May.

www.gobsquad.com



Comment (0) Send to friend Print Add to Facebook Socialise