Hotel Sorrento

Synopsis

Buried feelings of rivalry, loss and betrayal resurface when three sisters are reunited after ten years apart. Brought together in the sleepy Australian seaside town of Sorrento they grew up in, they are forced into self-examination when one of them publishes a novel drawn upon autobiography and the family’s past.

Our Review:

26 August 2010

If there’s a gulf between England and Australia, the one a land of tea and manners and the other of “Fosters and vomit,” then the void of self-identity at the heart of Hannie Rayson’s Hotel Sorrento is wider and deeper.

The fact that the play is studied on Australia’s school syllabus but is only now, after 20 years, receiving its UK premiere, points to a further cultural chasm. “British critics,” says one of the characters, “can’t conceive that… something of beauty, profundity or passion could arise from an experience that’s essentially Australian.”

There’s plenty of graceful writing in Rayson’s play, multiple themes swirling in a naturalistic mist before the homecoming of three sisters forces skeletons out of cupboards.

The sisters – homely Hilary, slightly tearaway Pippa and ex-pat Booker Prize-nominated writer Meg – have become separated by mor...

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