At The Sans Hotel

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At The Sans Hotel is not going to be for everyone. Filing out of the performance, the faces of tonight's audience are a perfect picture of bafflement and confusion. This is a production that has absolutely no respect for theatrical convention. There's no story, no structure, no lights up at the end, no space for applause. Indeed, standing in the foyer, we're not entirely sure if it has actually finished or whether we've all just accidentally walked out.

It's a disorientating experience. There is no coherent narrative line; indeed, although it's inspired by the experience of a German tourist incarcerated in Australia as an illegal immigrant, it really doesn't have much to do with this at all. It is largely an exploration of mental illness and breakdown, but it isn't an assemblage of set pieces exploring this theme in any systematic way.

Instead, At The Sans Hotel is a determinedly experimental collection of esoteric thoughts, images and glimpses of utter madness. It opens with performer Nicola Gunn apologising because The Sans Hotel's scheduled entertainment, a visit from a famous singer, has been cancelled. What follows is a very slow, very pronounced breakdown. Gunn takes us on a journey through depression and isolation in a way that is often genuinely affecting. Indeed, she is a performer of quite exceptional charisma, without whom it is doubtful that the play would work at all. That it does is entirely down to the warmth and vulnerability Gunn captures.