With naught but a doorframe and his own erratic imagination, actor-director Ben Russell transforms his small, skeletal nook of the Perth Fringe World fairgrounds into a hoary Los Angeles hotel bustling with eccentric characters; each given free reign by Russell’s impressive vocal and physical versatility.
Russell harangues the audience through his bewildering, 50-minute, narrative-free fever dream with ceaseless energy, a cocked eyebrow, and more than a little self-satisfied archness. We’re introduced to smooth-talking pianist Carlos, conspiracy theorist Martin LeBlanc, and TV serial actor Grey Mendelson (best known for his two-nosed character, aptly named Double Nose). Emperor Caligula mans the lift, joined momentarily by diabolical film director Werner Herzog.
While a worker vacuums to the chilling strains of Nickelback’s ‘Figured You Out’, a nearby visitor has a whirlwind tryst with a potplant. Far from your Chateau Marmont, Russell’s Tokyo Hotel is for outcasts and ingrates — a wasteland for Hollywood’s dejected majority.
Russell’s vigour and enthusiasm are blind-siding, but he’s able to use the awkward energy of the intimate crowd as creative fuel for his improvisatory skill. His tenure at Chicago’s prestigious Second City manifests very clearly in his ability to turn an uncooperative silence into a riotous in-joke for the audience to share.
The one-man show’s best moments follow in this vein of ramshackle adlibbing. When his door, his only set piece, buckles, Russell begs to borrow a set of keys from the audience to unjam its broken handle. Understandably grudging to offer up their keys, he assumes homelessness of the most of us. His humiliation is compounded by a sound technician fed up by his spur-of-the moment antics. With impeccable timing, she declares, “You’re such a d**k.”
Riffing on the dormant charm of great inns from the annals of pop culture and Old Hollywood lore — think the Grand Budapest, or perhaps even the gothic grounds of the Hotel Transylvania — Russell displays avaricious ambition in attempting to pack his Tokyo Hotel with as much character and eccentricity as possible.
Its overabundance of content works heartily in its favour. It’s a show that makes very little narrative sense, but like a comic tornado, it uproots your bearings and drags you upward to its maniacal infirmary.
It is, however, a fairly exhausting ride. By it’s end, one might be tempted to pull a Barton Finkand burn the whole joint down to the ground. At the Tokyo Hotel, a short stay is just long enough.
Ben Russell in the Tokyo Hotel runs from January 25-30 (except January 26) at The Blue Room Theatre in Northbridge. Tickets available here.
