THEATRE REVIEW

NOVEMBER 2024 | Volume 245

 

Billed as “an end-of-a-lifetime immersive theatre experience,” The Last Resort is an entertaining and somewhat puzzling affair. If I were forced to define it, I would call it immersive dance theatre. It takes place over two or three hours—you can come early and stay late or come late and leave early or anything in between—in the Tiki Bar and downstairs Hideaway and Tabu rooms in the At the Waldorf complex on East Hastings. Drinks are included in the ticket price, and a little alcohol probably enhances the experience. You must be 19+ to attend.

The show is ostensibly set in 1971, the period established primarily by recorded pop music, and … well, here’s how the company’s press release describes it: “The Last Resort follows a group of cruise ship passengers in the Bermuda Triangle who wind up in the titular hotel. The show’s immersive twist is that the audience members are the newest hotel guests, while the actors serve as the compelling – and perhaps other-worldly – mix of staff and patrons among them. It’s a party in paradise that might just be purgatory.”

At the entrance a maître d’ instructs you on the rules and decorum. You’re offered a lei, which, if you wear it, signifies that performers may approach you and ask you to join them in some way. You don’t have to take the lei. You’re also told that if, at any time, a performer’s request makes you uncomfortable, just say no thanks. It’s explained that the upstairs room, with its working bar, is paradise where discussion is encouraged. The downstairs rooms are purgatory or hell, where you can follow any performer(s)whenever you choose, but not speak to them. I should say that at the preview I attended, I didn’t see any performers accosting, seducing, or otherwise inviting audience members to join them.

If the theme of the show is death or the hereafter, not much makes that clear, other than that one performer (Claire Elizabeth) wears a Halloweenish black skeleton suit. There is no dialogue per se and little verbal interaction between the performers or between performers and audience. The show is mostly dance, often highly imaginative dance, choreographed by Shara Turner and Ashleigh Kearns.

A sort of Manager figure (Annuar Chain Haddad) sometimes controls the action and a writer at a typewriter (Andrew Wade) produces material you can read. There are also a couple of women in drag (Barbara Guertin is one) and two dancing bartenders. Most of the performers are dressed for a party and move between the downstairs rooms, improvising dance alone or with a partner, or performing brief choreographed duets. At moments some of the duets became dramatic, almost violent, adagio-style. But I was never quite able to make out exactly what the tension or disagreement might have involved.

Although the plot or story, such as it may be, escaped me, I was rarely bored. There was always someone interesting to look at who was breaking into dance with or without a partner. The performers I found most compelling were Cleo Halls and Fiona Jenkins, who dressed similarly in orange flowered outfits and often danced together very dynamically, and Claire Davis, another actor/dancer with a lot of presence.

And at one time the audience group I was with was taught to do The Hustle.And I did.

 

 

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