first night review: bunny hill motel @ the new marigny theatre, new orleans

Bunny Hill Motel @ The New Marigny Theatre

​Run, Rabbit: First night review, Bunny Hill Motel @ The New Marigny Theatre
Review by Dorian Hatchett

The auditorium is dark. In an antique church sanctuary with a cluster of seating at one end, the audience shouldn’t be conscious of the great room around them. In this dark, though,  the expanse of space around the audience presses in close. Filled with live piano music, the dark is a little unsettling-alive, liquid. The curtains draw back and the audience collectively breathes a sigh of relief. There is momentum, a beginning. The relief was premature though, as the following ninety minutes of will-they-or-won’t-they tension doesn’t allow for anything resembling comfort.  

Bunny Hill Motel is an original one act play written, directed and produced by Alex Anthony Vazquez. Blue Theatre Company is labeling it 'neo-noir' and the undercurrent themes of crime, punishment, and the consequences of dubious morality are certainly fitting that label.

The curtain draws down on a single room in a cheap motel. A fraught Caleb Elias plays John.  He’s a criminal, but we don’t know what kind. The things we are aware of are that he’s got a gun, a bag of cash, and if he doesn’t slow down and breathe, the apprehension is gonna give us all a heart attack. 

Enter Daisy (played by Abigail Duhon) who is a regular call girl with a specific set of skills, and everything goes from stressed to complicated faster than you can say your safe word. John is a man with big dreams but no real ambition. He is everyone’s cousin who is so intent on finding a get rich quick scheme that he doesn’t realize that it’s less work to just get a job.

The actors all do an excellent job, even as they're portraying hard-to-love antagonists - and in my eyes, a well-written villain is worth ten heroes. Elias skilfully presents a character that is relatable, if not imitable, and for instance, we want John to succeed, even if only to shut him up. The more Daisy talks, the more we realize that no one is exceptional without a past. Her cavalier attitude and witty banter are hiding a lifetime of failures in a world just not built for someone like her. Even at her most wonderfully wretched, she is an electrical current; carrying the action on the back of her stilettos.  

Vidal Amador-Flores is Peter, John’s childhood best friend turned partner in crime. He’s a little crass (in the universe of the play, Daisy would call him “banal”) and a lot cavalier about just what needs to be done to get the job done.  Amador-Flores manages to create a foil that is hilarious, but not in a highbrow way. There’s not much about him that you can’t see right on the surface, and that takes a pitch perfect performance from the actor. Anthony Carollo plays Seymour- the widower hotelier who just does not know how to take a hint and take a hike.  

The entire production takes place in just one room of the Bunny Hill Motel (Elvis stayed in that room once, before he got big.  How do you feel about Elvis?). It’s about the lengths people will go to when they feel trapped, and just how disparate the definition of  “trapped” can be for different people. It’s funny and sad and when it’s over, and you’re aware of the dark again, you might not be willing to admit just how far you might go if you were in the same place.  

Bunny Hill Motel runs through June 1st at the New Marigny Theatre.  

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