The Haunting of Hatlock Hotel

It’s always lovely when a company puts on something written by one of their own. In the programme introduction Judith Foot explains that she is no stranger to writing scripts having written many others, and always wanted to write a ghost story: so here we have a hotel which has tricks to pretend to guests that its haunted, without realising it actually is haunted, discovered when one of their own has an accident causing them to appear as a ghost in their own establishment. 

It’s a fun premise and the cast all approached this with gusto, the enjoyment was clear to see on each of them. The multiple locations throughout were achieved with projections which worked really well, including the deliberate spelling mistakes in the Elvis poster in the first slide causing hilarity with ‘Elviy’ coming to perform. The lights are of the highest standard and they used them really well, the only issue at the end were the rotating lights on the stage floor which shone lights into the eyes of some of the audience causing not being able to see the stage.  

Costumes were a huge strength with every character, the Blue Lady in her absolute finery, the receptionist at the desk kitted out in black and white as you would expect, and everything in between. The various guests were all dressed for their characters and each one had luggage when they arrived. When the stand in Elvis appeared dressed as the King of Rock’n Roll complete with black haired wig it was super fun: something Nigel Enever looked so comfortable doing, with a beautiful voice to boot, sounding and moving like we expected Elvis to do. 

As a jukebox musical the music interludes were sometimes solos and sometimes group numbers with dancing. The shapes they made with levels interchanging the front and back lines were really interesting, and the movements were synchronised with everyone working together. Sometimes they seemed uncertain as to when to come in with the lyrics, they could have benefitted from a music leader at the front of the stage as well as the one in the prompt box to conduct them in, the hesitancy in starting lines affected how well it came across. 

The ‘Thriller’ dance was really well done, copying aspects of the original video which caused delight in the audience. Judith Foot has a lovely operatic voice in her songs which were classically done. Lois Lanyon surprised with sass and performance skills as well as lovely voice in ‘Licence to Kill’. She also had some lovely acting moment, performing a hangover particularly well. Nasim Chillcott and Ian Sander-Cawley make a lovely hotel staff team with care and connection between them which was lovely, Ian being the punchline of many of the misheard words jokes, and Nasim trying to smooth things over. Pauline Kennedy had lovely presence as well and sang a lovely version of ‘Nobody Does It Better’ with a lovely voice.  

As a story many of the guests are stereotypes, where the realistic aspects of the hotel staff were interesting. It would benefit from a lot more pace, and once the script is tightened further it wouldn’t be almost three hours long and it would benefit from considerations to staging and the length of some of the scenes requiring set changes. Some of the different strands of story are really funny and interesting, and it has a lot of potential. Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this show, it’s clear it’s a community effort, which is delightful to see. 

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