The Grand Old Opera House Hotel – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Ali Watt and Karen Fishwick in The Grand Old Opera House Hotel at the Traverse Theatre, London. Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel continues at the Traverse Theatre until 27 August 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Late for staff training at the Scotmodo hotel, Aaron (Ali Watt) believes he’s stumbled on a supernatural presence, an operatic apparition which manifests in a bedroom door. Actually, this is chambermaid Amy (Karen Fishwick, in terrific voice), an opera buff who likes to sing along to her Walkman as she works. Ignorant of the truth, Aaron learns the hotel was once an opera house (burned to the ground while performers sang their final duet) and resolves to find the ‘ghost’ who has captured his imagination and awakened a new passion in his nebbishy soul.

Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s ingenious set – initially, a faceless corridor of doors – suggests farce, and for the first two-thirds of Isobel McArthur’s new comedy, that’s exactly what we get; a series of misadventures involving underpaid staff and appalling customer behaviour. There are gags about overqualified service workers and the generic design of hotel chains; an anonymous bedroom, revealed when the corridor splits, becomes every room in the hotel, populated over and over again by multiple guests.

But something is seriously amiss here; doors lock themselves at random, electrical faults plunge everyone into darkness and nothing works properly. Meanwhile, our star-crossed lovers fail to meet, despite tantalising clues; Aaron finds Amy’s Walkman and cassettes, steeping himself in classical music until he literally finds his voice, talking (or singing) a suicidal guest down from a window ledge. Famous opera figures start to appear – Carmen, the Commendatore, a Valkyrie – levitating outside windows or emerging incongruously from hotel bathrooms, as Aaron’s love of opera (and his elusive muse) blossoms.

This is all great fun, but the show truly takes flight during its final half-hour when it follows its instincts to become a full-fledged opera. Contemporary language is set to heightened melodies to hilarious effect, whether it’s Aaron being told he must be in love because he’s “got all the feels” or a technically virtuosic display of involuntary noises made by someone standing under a cold shower. The music is a combination of famous arias and original music by Michael John McCarthy; the latter is an effective pastiche, but it’s a hilariously re-worded section of celebrated opera melodies that really scores.

Opera tropes are everywhere (service staff indulging the whims of their superiors, would-be lovers wooing each other through a door they can’t open) so inevitably the story reaches its dramatic climax on a rooftop, as Aaron and Amy finally meet and declare their love for one another.

Fishwick is a delight as the ever-optimistic Amy, and it’s to Watt’s credit that he makes us care about the perpetually put-upon Aaron; from the moment he opens his mouth to sing (very winningly), we’re on side.

Indeed, everyone sings splendidly, and Christina Modestou, Ann Louise Ross, Betty Valencia, Laura Lovemore and Barrie Hunter play a bewildering array of characters to the hilt. Special mention must go to Ross for her gossipy, chain-smoking Morag and the distraught betrayed wife, snatched from suicide by Aaron’s serenade.

Mark Kydd