An inconsequential hotel nestled away on a quiet street,
between a handicrafts market and a sewerage plant. The short space between the hotel’s
front gates and its foyer door measures about six metres. This distance is
almost impossible to traverse without either seeing or being accosted by a
Cuban doctor – usually sans T-shirt – who wants to say ‘bondia bonita’ and tell
you he’s worried about your pale skin.
The first act of the play is set in the foyer of the hotel –
a poky room decorated with fake flowers and a tin box with ‘condoms’ printed on
the front, presided over by a TV tuned into a poker championship. The foyer is
invariably in use by one of the hotel inhabitants, as a kind of public sitting
room/meeting room/bar. It’s compulsory when sitting in the foyer to be:
a) smoking a cigarette
b) smoking a cigar or pipe
c) drinking beer, or
d) all of the above (it is possible).
The protagonist is the hotel manager – his distinctive
hairdo is one part Bob Marley and two parts Dolly Parton. He divides his time
between talking to the guests, playing PlayStation and interrogating matters of
deep philosophical importance. He presides over the chaos wrought by Cuban
doctors, UN police from China and Malaysia, a money-hungry Australian working
for an oil company and his Timorese staff (who know how to fix air conditioners
with plastic bottles).
The second act is set in the hotel’s communal kitchen –
which is completely derelict but features a full range of patterned plastic
plates. The characters eat outside, debating UN politics and the merits of
sitcoms, while serenaded by the constant drone of the generator and the gentle
clicking of geckos.
I was thinking a Tartuffian concoction with all the
slapstick exits and entrances you would expect, along with some cross-cultural,
politically incorrect jokes. Of course, any resemblance to real persons, living
or dead, is purely coincidental (and has nothing to do with the fact I have
been living at this hotel and it is all undeniably real).
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