Georges Feydeau “Hotel Paradiso” directed by John Seibert at Eastern Michigan University’s Quirk Theatre opened this past Friday.
With mistaken identities, ghosts, dueling couples and everyone’s favorite thing to mock, the police, “Hotel Paradiso” offers up a little something for the entire audience.
Set in Paris during 1912, this play imitates marriage in a cracked sense: with two main couples who just can not get along. Instead of a traditional social structure, there are secrets that could bring down marriages and ruin social statuses.
“Hotel Paradiso” is the bridge to looser morals from the refined, ridiculous behavior from all couples and patrons and it all takes place in just two nights.
The show opens with one of the two main couples, the Pinglets, dancing around their living room. Stepping in time with the music this dance simulates a smiling robotic couple who look perfectly happy together. The setting is spacious while the coloring is light and happy. Mr. Pinglet, who is played by Maxim Hunt, is a man who completely loathes his wife and is a brilliant plotter.
He is attracted to his best friend’s wife, Marcelle, played by Luna Alexander, and is trying to come up with a plan to woo her while hiding it from his wife. This is easier said than done for Mrs. Pinglet, who is played by Joanna Motowski, and is a formidable woman that takes no nonsense from her husband.
At one point she takes the house key and locks her husband in because he wants to go out to eat while she was visiting her sister. This couple offers up many reasons for the audience to laugh because their outrageous behavior.
“The overall pacing of the show was tremendous and it had lovely character development. “Hotel Paradiso” offered up huge laughs,” theater professor Susan Badger Booth said.
However, Mr. Pinglet is not the only one who is involved in the scheming. Alexander’s character Marcelle is fed up with her husband who only has time for work and nothing else. Marcelle tells her husband Cot she might just seek others who want her affection.
Cot, played by Joseph Fournier, is hired to look for ghosts in the “Hotel Paradiso” and just so happens to wind up in the same hotel as his wife and best friend.
The hotel is everything that a slimy second rate establishment should be: broken, sad and a seedy hole. The hotel manager Anniello is a dirty grease ball and is played to a tee by Andy Orscheln. One of the hotel’s more outrageous patrons Tabu, played by Jay Donley, resembles something outside of Aladdin and works his magic that is temperamental.
Alex Gay gives the audience a joyful laugh with his stereotypical police inspector who takes bribes, gets people confused with other people and has no idea what is going on.
Every person in this show added little moments to make “Hotel Paradiso,” an outrageous comedy that, as promised, made the audience laugh all night. Tickets can still be bought in Quirk Theater for next week’s production, which will run March 25-27.