Stay With Us | The Riverview Hotel | Until 8th December | ★ ★ ★ ★  

Local theatre company The Last Great Hunt have a great track record in delivering innovative and creative performances, and for their latest offering they take us out of the traditional theatre space and into a hotel for a memorable experience.

Stay With Us is perfectly titled. It matches the hotel setting, encapsulates what the story we’re told is about, and also serves as a reassurance to nervous audience members. Stay with us – it’ll all be okay.

We’re greeted by a bell-boy, who takes us into the hotel. It’s a small group of people, eight per session. We travel to the second floor and he calmly reassures us about what’s about to happen. We’ll be heading into several different rooms of the hotel, we’ll be watching events unfold, but at times we’ll also be called up to undertake some simple tasks – for we too are part of the storytelling experience.

This is one of those shows where if we tell you too much about it, it’ll spoil the experience – so we’ll keep the details to a minimum. In the first room when we entered you could hear a hairdryer being operated in the bathroom. We were asked to put on a white bathrobe, and we each found a space to stand around the room. Once we were settled a woman came out of the bathroom and started to process the day she’d had.

From here we proceeded through a series of rooms each delivering a different part of the story.

The show took us on a journey that was both comedic and emotionally affecting. There were sections that made you feel like you had transcended this mortal earth, parts that made you revisit your childhood, there were moments of hilarity, and instances of sorrow.

Earlier this year the Western Australian Youth Theatre Company delivered a fantastic experiential show with YourSeven.  While that show was a solo voyage, this production was different because you were part of a larger audience going on a journey together. After the show we gathered in the front bar of the hotel and discussed the experience – which is an essential part of the journey.

The show’s created by the team of Arielle Gray, Tim Watts and Chris Isaacs, with Gray taking on directing duties while Watts and Isaacs perform alongside Clare Testoni, Gita Bezard and Jo Morris, while Scott McArdle serves as the front of house staff.

Stay With Us is playing now, book tickets from The Last Great Hunt.

Graeme Watson, Image: Scott McArdle photographed by Daniel James Grant.