Donnacha Dennehy The Last Hotel, Wide Open Opera with Crash Ensemble, Edinburgh International Festival

Extract

When greeted by a deconstructed, open set of brutal bleakness (designed by Jamie Vartan), haunted by the waste of the night before – a pink high-heeled shoe, empty coat hangers and discarded plastic cups – one is made immediately aware of the potency of Enda Walsh's theatrical aesthetic. There is a lone orange balloon offering a tragic echo of a party. Underscored with silence, The Hotel Servant (played by Walsh's long-term collaborator Mikel Murfi) enters and cleans the blood from the stained hotel room floor, and does so with a charisma equal to that of Michael Gambon in the opening scene of Krapp's Last Tape.