We’re looking forward to welcoming Sheepish Productions with their darkly funny play The Last Motel. Reviews from the show performed in 2022 tell of a “deft two-hander” which “lives up to its billing as a cinematic tour de force”.
We hear of glorious set pieces “performed with to die for precision”. The set design is by Caitlin Mawhinney (Evening Standard award winning designer, who has just been nominated for The Stage’s Best Debut designer award).
The Last Motel is written by award-nominated Jeremy Fletcher, whose work has been performed on the BBC, Sky TV (Fest Live).
The Last Motel was reviewed by Anthony Pickthall at Cast, Doncaster in September 2022
“This deft two hander packs a punch and lives up to its billing as a cinematic tour de force. Slow Tarantino for people who prefer their blood and guts in the mind.
The opening sequence in this new play written by Jeremy Fletcher, presented by Sheepish and directed by Marcus Bazley plays out with stunning economy and pays homage to such classics of cinema as Paris Texas with a Ry Cooderesque soundtrack and a lamp lit set that recalls Psycho. The glorious visual set pieces set the emotional tone which the two performers coil around their collective physical exchanges. So much hinges on subtle details pulled into an ever sharper focus.
Performed with to die for precision by Jeremy Drakes and Angela Rose, The Last Motel is an entertaining and superbly funny burst of Yorkshire noir that somehow combines tropes of thrillers past from Double Indemnity to Reservoir Dogs. The intensity of the single room setting heightens the tension and the meditation on grief and pandemic that corners this mismatched couple trapped in a motel room seven miles from Barnsley makes the ending a sun-baked twist of epic proportions.
This is serious theatre delivered with panache and skilfully supported by a thrilling use of sound and light. Go and bathe in the glow that this flick throws out with chilling humour and slow burn thrills made all the more plausible by two deliciously judged performances. Dirty Barry indeed. The Last Motel hits home in the darkest of Yorkshire triangles.”
