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(More customer reviews)"Hotel Universe" opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York City in April 1930 and ran for 81 performances. Franchot Tone played Tom Ames; and Ruth Gordon played Lily Malone. Brendan Gill in his introduction to the Barry collection "States of Grace" labels the theme of the play "existential despair." That seems to me to look exclusively on the dark side of the piece. My interpretation was more positive. Barry thought enough of the play to have lines from it carved on his tombstone: "All things are turned to a roundness. Wherever there is an end, from it springs a beginning." Many critics regard "Hotel Universe" as Barry's best play. The two-hour piece is unusual in that Barry wrote it to be performed without an intermission. Written in 1929 while Barry was in Cannes, the play is set in a small seaside village in southern France.
Ann Field has bought an old hotel that went out of business called in English, Hotel Universe. She has lived there for three years with her father Stephen who is in ill health. On a hunch, Ann finds that friends of hers are vacationing in France and invites them to her villa. One is a former boyfriend, Pat Farley, who sings, plays piano and wisecracks. A married couple Tom & Hope Ames are also present. Tom seems dissatisfied with something in his marriage and keeps trying to head out on foreign travel, while wife Hope clucks about her house & children left behind. Norman Rose is a handsome Jewish business with wads of cash who has a crush on Alice Kendall who is a pretty young girl without great sophistication or education. Also thrown into this mix is the character Ruth Gordon played, Lily Malone. Lily is an actress who has a fixation on her father, who was a drunken actor who left her mother.
The exposition tells us that Hotel Universe went out of business because of the strange and unexplained events which occurred there and gave the place a spooky reputation. One of the things that happens is that people who visit there often begin to translate this Mediterranean terrace to locales from their past such as an apartment in New Hampshire, a place in England, or a poolside in Florida.
With the characters introduced and getting on each other's nerves, we learn that some of them recently observed a young man apparently commit suicide as he dove off a high promontory into the ocean saying that he was off to Africa, and then was apparently lost in the sea. The play gets depressing as Lily encourages everyone to contemplate suicide. It seems to hang in the air as a temptation to relieve the stresses & disappointments they bear from their lives.
Then the play gets popping as Barry employs a couple psychodramas with characters assuming the persona of others in the party and then acting out arguments as their namesakes watch. Prejudice against Jews, Catholics & those with dark skin are explored.
The play enters its final stretch with the appearance of Ann's father. He seems to be able to enter the identity as people in the others' minds. For Tom, he becomes Father Francis, a spiritual mentor before Tom lost faith. For Lily, he becomes her abusive father whose harsh treatment dispels her fond memories and heroization of her father. For Pat, he becomes the father of Pat's lost English love, Mary. We learn why Ann & Pat never got back together, how Pat fell in love with Mary and left her when dissuaded from marriage by his father. Finally after a year & a half he returned to Mary who had committed suicide several days earlier, despondent about not having Pat.
Stephen articulates the moral of the play, which for me is the more positive alternative to that of "existential despair." Stephen says that we live three lives concurrently. We have our everyday lives of waking, working, and keeping appointments. We also have a second life, our dream life that includes all of our hopes and things we wished we'd been able to accomplish. We also have a third eternal existence that has already begun with this life and continues on after death. This is the hopeful brilliance that Barry brings to this play.
"Hotel Universe" would not be an easy piece to perform, but could be excellent. The switching of characters in the psychodramas and the mystical flashbacks that each character has may confuse some used to a more straightforward story. In the play, Barry does treat serious themes, manages to find happy endings, and weaves some spiritual truths that still seem profound over seven decades later. Enjoy!
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THIS 70 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Theatre Guild Anthology V2, by Philip Barry. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1419181424.
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