Heartbreak Hotel

Two performers, Karin McCracken and Eleanor Bishop, are the creative partnership behind the EBKM. Heartbreak Hotel star Karin McCracken steps out on stage as a solo performer. It is an educational performance, wrapped around a dramatic play about a couple breaking up after six years, co-starring Simon Leary and directed by Eleanor Bishop.

Heartbreak Hotel, written and sung by the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, is a simple pop song about breaking up with the person you loved and finding yourself dwelling on lonely street because you are so damn lonely you could die.

Elvis lives in memory with EBKM. They have made considered set choices with lurid props that highlight the famous kitsch interior of his home at Graceland. The pixilated led lights surrounding the stage are cleverly devised and mock Elvis’s last concerts before he passed away back in 1977 at the tender age of 42 from a tragic overdose.

EKBM are multidisciplinary artists based in Aotearoa, New Zealand and have been making “socially minded, formally innovative, contemporary performance” since 2017, winning awards and touring shows around the world. Karin McCracken worked as a lawyer and is a specialist sexual violence prevention educator. Eleanor Bishop is a director and writer who works across theatre, opera and film.

McCracken wears a pale purple pant suit with frills and rhinestones. She has stage presence and knows how to tickle our funny bone, but behind the façade there is a stoic drive to enlighten and challenge her audience. Elements of Laurie Anderson including echoing reverberations in sound performance fused with Barbara Kruger style digital art complement her lecture on the extensive range of chemicals produced during relationship break ups and the positive and negative effects they have on our brains and bodies.

Her multilayered powerhouse solo performance is seamlessly interspersed with the stage play about her breakup. Together with Simon Leary - who performs three male characters - her pick up on a date night event; an accountant who arranges her finances and finally her now ex-boyfriend. The play is well written and tight in performance, both actors are clever at maintaining their roles during the overall transitional eclectic performances by McCracken.

 EBKM have created a show that  educates and entertains their audience. Heartbreak Hotel is a challenging and scintillating performance/theatre show, flawless in its conception and unique in  its style.

Flora Georgiou

Images: Andi Crown Photography