Review: Hotel Sorrento, Cock Tavern

Written for Time Out

Perhaps it’s best that Chekhov’s three sisters never made Moscow. On the evidence of Hannie Rayson’s Australian classic, it would have made for a pretty tumultuous family barbecue.

The bickering begins once two expatriate sisters return to their childhood home in Sorrento, a seaside town near Melbourne, where the third has remained, caring for their father. The first, Pippa, flies in from New York, newly fashioned in wardrobe and character. London-based Meg arrives after a Booker Prize nomination for a semi-autobiographical novel packed with home truths and closet skeletons.

Wearing its various theses about Australian identity so openly, Rayson’s 1990 play fees syllabus-ready. Even when her characters aren’t debating the nation’s ills outright, one always sees the symbolism beneath the translucent narrative. Rayson’s Oz is a picture of boorish parochialism, “rife with xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.” It’s all boozing and snoozing, and little else. And yet, she’s careful to balance the slobbish with the snobbish. Her expats aren’t exactly sympathetically drawn.

But one has to question its programming. Exactly how pertinent is the state of the Australian nation on the Kilburn High Road? Is the stuck-in-the-mud, head-in-the-sand portrayal still applicable given the Sydney Olympics and more recent political upheaval?

Nonetheless, director Adam Spreadbury-Maher creates a strong sense of Sorrento’s nostalgic charms, aided by Micka Agosta’s horizon-like design, while Maggie Daniels provides emotional weight as the earthy, anchored Hilary.