Review: Grief Hotel, Where You Can Check-Out Any Time You Like, but You Can Never Leave

Money makes everything easier. Having spent large stretches of my life without much, I’m quite convinced of that. Because disappointment, heartache, and grief are inevitable in life — so you might as well be comfortable on your journey.

Aunt Bobbi has a business idea that springs from this notion (Susan Blommaert plays her with just the right amount of jarring yet endearing impertinence). We meet her as she pitches her idea for a “grief hotel,” a place where wealthy young people who have recently experienced loss, “get to catch up with reality, because time isn’t going to work right in your mind.”  For enough money (Aunt Bobbi describes this “bespoke” experience as “beaucoup beaucoup expensive”) guests get “a more controlled experience of time.”

Her pitch is just the foyer of Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel, an expansive resort of intrigue and insight, which you can explore for 80 entrancing minutes. The play, which was presented last June as part of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks series, has now returned for a longer run at the Public Theater, produced by Clubbed Thumb in association with New Georges. Even if you caught it during its very limited first run, this is a play you’ll want to revisit like a favorite vacation destination — a place where there is always something new to discover.

Most immediately we sense an atmosphere of decay and ennui: Bobbi’s niece Em (intimidating, intelligent, quietly desperate Nadine Malouf) is married to Rohit (Naren Weiss, a large hurt puppy-dog of a man). But she’s less interested in him than she is her AI chatbot, Melba. Melba is, of course, not a real woman — but when Em envisions her, she pictures her ex-girlfriend Winn (an alluringly inscrutable Ana Nogueira).

Winn is now in a relationship with Teresa (Susannah Perkins, radiating confidence that is unnervingly rare in anyone under 30 these days). But she’s looking for something that Teresa cannot provide, “a novel experience of pleasure,” in her own words. She finds that on Tinder with Asher (Bruce McKenzie, with a stealthy charm that grows on you). He’s a country music singer who reached his career apex during the Bush administration and is perhaps the last person one would expect to find in this play populated by anxious pansexual hipsters — which is what makes him such a great character.

As with her earlier play, Dr. Ride’s American Beach House, Birkenmeier displays a shrewd understanding of dynamic female sexuality — ever shifting, never fully explainable, acting boldly in defiance of our facile taxonomy of identity. But unlike that play, which was set in 1983, Grief Hotel takes place now, a time when the marketplace of human interaction has vastly expanded, bringing the consumer experience to sex and relationships. With so many avenues for connection, why is it that so many people feel isolated?

Half of the scenes in Grief Hotel take place between characters that are not even in the same room but conversing via text message. Director Tara Ahmadinejad has wisely opted for simplicity by having the characters speak these texts, but there’s something static about their physical performances, moody little portraits that give us a sense of how the recipient pictures the individual behind the blue bubbles on the screen. The performances become more natural when the characters actually do meet face-to-face (the scenes between Nogueira and McKenzie are especially real, conveying the candor and intimacy that is sometimes shared between strangers). But even during these clandestine moments, all the actors linger onstage with their heads down or facing a wall. You can try to escape with drugs or devices, but once you’re in the grief hotel, there’s only one way out.

The set, by the design collective dots, projects claustrophobia, despite being sparsely furnished (there are only two chairs and a piano bench for a cast of six). The upstage wall pushes the actors against the edge of the stage in an assertive diagonal, with the narrowest corner convincingly serving as Asher’s mansion. Masha Tsimring’s lighting imperceptibly guides our focus, seemingly creating new rooms in this limited space. Mel Ng’s costumes complement the excellent performances (I especially enjoyed Rohit’s stoner-toddler look). And we actually get to hear Asher’s biggest hit, “Roads Go,” which Jordan McCree composed for the cast to sing in a cathartic karaoke session. I was humming it out the door.

The themes of Grief Hotel are heavy, but Birkenmeier and company present them with ample humor and lightness, a kindness since there’s plenty of sadness awaiting us outside the theater. There’s a tiny mitochondrion of optimism powering this play about grief and disconnection: For now, the evolution of human desire and creativity vastly outpaces the static labels, rigid legal frameworks, and newfangled electronic devices that govern our lives. When that’s no longer true, we’ll truly have something to mourn.