At the Hotel Savoy, visitors check in, but they don’t necessarily check out (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Goethe-Institut
1014 Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 83rd Sts.
Wednesdays through Sundays through October 31, $15-$25, 5:30-9:45
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org
www.goethe.de
It’s getting tougher and tougher to get a reservation at the Hotel Savoy, so if you want to book a room, you better act fast. When commissioned by the Goethe-Institut to create a site-specific production in its historic building, Swiss theater architect Dominic Huber turned to Joseph Roth’s 1924 novel, HOTEL SAVOY, for inspiration. In collaboration with PS122, Huber transformed several floors of 1014 Fifth Ave., then hired nonprofessional actors to play employees of the creepy, mysterious hotel. Visitors are brought in one at a time and led on a strange fifty-minute journey where they’ll meet an elevator operator, a concierge, a cleaning woman, a bartender, and other hotel guests as they traverse narrow halls, a winding staircase, and dark passages. (To increase the feeling of reality, Huber found the elevator operator working across the street as an elevator operator at the Met, the bartender from Barbados is in fact a bartender from Barbados whose story is true, and the celebrity hairstylist is indeed a celebrity hairstylist.) Newspaper clippings, old photographs, sounds from adjoining rooms, and postcards give hints toward the hotel’s past, so visitors should keep a sharp eye out and take advantage of all they see. And the more that guests engage the people they come into contact with and take in their surroundings, the more they’ll learn. And perhaps above all, be patient. Over the last year, New York City has had a number of interactive productions that relied significantly on individual audience member’s interaction and involvement, from Tino Sehgal’s “This Progress” at the Guggenheim to art.party’s “Starbox” in Bryant Park to Christine Jones’s “Theatre for One”; HOTEL SAVOY is like a mix of all of those, filtered through THE SHINING. It’s about communication, loneliness, trust, and ghosts, walking that fine line between dream and reality, a different kind of haunted house for this Halloween season. The show runs Wednesday through Sunday nights from 5:30 to 9:45, with guests entering every seven and a half minutes; tickets are extremely limited, so don’t hesitate if you want to be part of a unique and engaging experience.