There’s the sound of gentle sobbing in the audience when Karin McCracken gets her tax return during Heartbreak Hotel. Sitting there, also gently sobbing, I tried to remember who it was that said "There are two certainties in this world: death and taxes". I also wondered if heartbreak should be included as a third certainty, or if 'death' was close enough.
It takes McCracken five years to finally finish her tax return, six years to get over her previous relationship and six chords on a synth machine for her to transform those years into 75 minutes of inventive and heart-wrenching theatre. From the acclaimed Aotearoa-New Zealand-based duo EBKM, Heartbreak Hotel is the best kind of show: a conceptually rich and technically daring portrait of a break-up that blends memoir and theatre to bring just the right amount of spectacle to a universal human experience. Are overdue taxes good first date banter? No. Can heartbreak kill me? Yes. When are we ready to move on? Who knows. Why do we do this to each other? Fucked if I know.
The show is structured like theatricalised autofiction – each scene a chapter in a dramatized essay on the pathologies and philosophies of love (and loss) packed with personal anecdotes, synth-backed break-up anthems and deep dives into the microbiology of heartbreak. With a heavily modulated voice and an Elvis-style lavender pantsuit, McCracken delivers moody covers of Celine Dion, Bonnie Raitt and the King himself. Each number starts off light-hearted and endearing – playfully sentimental like everything in the show. "Do you know this one?" McCracken quips, looking out at us with the casual warmth and self-awareness she uses so effectively throughout to immerse us in her experience. A sniffle or a light gasp (the kind of sound you make when someone presses an alcohol wipe on an open wound) from the audience signals an unsaid response: we know these songs, and we know this experience.
When she’s not delivering quietly devastating covers, McCracken is telling us about the chemical reactions that come with each phase of a break-up: from the hormones that make hearing a partner say "We need to talk" feel indistinguishable from a bear attack; to Takotsubo syndrome, the weakening of the walls of the heart during ‘heartbreak’. It’s certain, then: heartbreak feels like death. But do not expect sermonic TedTalks. McCracken’s naturalistic delivery will also weaken the walls of your heart as she makes every fact, anecdote or whip-smart one-liner charming and relatable; every recounted fight breathtaking in its honesty. It’s this combination of well-written humour, realistic drama and technically impressive set design (a plush pink carpet framed by thin LED screens) that ensures Heartbreak Hotel never loses its poignancy by becoming too sentimental.
And McCracken has a perfect partner in crime in actor Simon Leary; who stands in for her ex-partner, gay best friend and even Elvis himself. He’s dragging the lovelorn McCracken to live gigs and Berlin darkrooms. Or he’s playing the ‘avoidant’ partner too well during a tense fight over tacos. The pair have a magnetic chemistry, and their subtle approach to comedic and dramatic moments helps the show’s tragedy land with a devastating naturalism.
Heartbreak Hotel is one of the best productions I’ve seen this year. It’s a tender-hearted exemplar of what can be accomplished when creative stagecraft meets authentic, measured storytelling. It was beautiful joining a chorus of quietly sobbing people on a cold Tuesday night while a voiceover recited Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ and digital stars glittered on towering LED screens. If heartbreak is one of life’s certainties then its pain is something we share.
But this is a show that asks us to think of tears as more than just pain and sadness. They are salt and water – the last phase in a long series of tiny interconnected chemical processes. The pain that provokes them is in those processes, sure. Heartbreak Hotel ends by asking us to think of them as one example of our body translating the love we have (or had) for someone into millions of chemical processes within millions of nerves, cells and muscle fibres – into hormone spikes, dopamine dips, heartbeats and tears. Where does love, and the memory of love, go? It’s always somewhere in us – in our very cells.
Heartbreak Hotel is showing at the Arts Centre Melbourne until June 22. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.
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