As part of the Tauranga Arts Festival, Heartbreak Hotel doesn’t simply unfold before its audience—it enfolds them. Devised and performed by Karin McCracken, with Simon Learyas her deft and versatile collaborator, this production blurs the boundaries between theatre, lecture and shared confession. It asks, with sincerity and mischief: what is heartbreak, and what does it do to us—physically, chemically, spiritually?

From the moment the house lights go down in the Addison Theatre, McCracken positions us not as bystanders but as participants in a collective experiment. She invites us to summon the memories we may prefer to bury — the break-ups that left us unmoored, the absences that hollowed us out. It’s an audacious start, yet her warmth and wit immediately establish trust. The result is something closer to a conversation than a performance, as if the entire theatre has become a support group of strangers bound by invisible ache.

McCracken’s command of tone is extraordinary. She oscillates between wry humour and unguarded vulnerability with precision, never lapsing into sentimentality. Her comic timing transforms embarrassment into empathy; her pauses, when silence thickens between phrases, allow the weight of memory to settle gently on the room. Supporting her, Simon Leary slips seamlessly between characters: a sympathetic friend, a confused shop clerk, an ex-lover, even an unspoken conscience hovering nearby. His restraint is essential — he shapes the rhythm without stealing the melody.

What distinguishes Heartbreak Hotel from most meditations on loss is its marriage of art and neuroscience. McCracken treats heartbreak as both phenomenon and pathology, guiding us through the body’s internal choreography when love collapses. We learn that the grief of separation isn’t metaphorical—it’s biological. The brain, suddenly deprived of oxytocin and dopamine, floods itself with norepinephrine, that panicky hormone of alertness and yearning, while cortisol surges in the bloodstream like static electricity.

These chemical shifts mimic addiction withdrawal; the broken-hearted quite literally go through detox. Yet McCracken never lets the science distance us. Her delivery makes biology feel intimate — proof that our pain is real, measurable and shared.

The production’s staging heightens its honesty and precision. A single chair, a desk, and a synthesiser form the physical centre of the space, surrounded by LED light strips that pulse, flicker and flow across the stage. These projections are far from subtle — they become an expressive language of their own, translating shifts in mood, tempo and tone into vivid illumination.

Even McCracken’s costume—a tailored suit often mentioned by her — deserves note. I don’t think it’s too much. Rather, it becomes a kind of armour, as if she’s dressing for both a presentation and a post-mortem. It reminds us that recovery often begins with the effort to appear composed while one’s heart is still in pieces.

Music threads gently through Heartbreak Hotel, adding layers of expression that words alone can’t quite reach. The songs emerge sometimes subtly — almost as private thoughts set to melody — and at other times with deliberate theatrical flourish. Each one carries emotional nuance, deepening our understanding of the moment without disrupting its intimacy. Like the best numbers in musicals, these interludes articulate what speech cannot: longing, regret and the fragile hope that endures even amid loss. McCracken uses them sparingly but purposefully, and they lend the performance a rhythm that mirrors the heart itself—steady, faltering, and resilient.

Structurally, the play mirrors the emotional arc of heartbreak. The early scenes hum with disbelief and deflection, the middle stretches ache with confusion and grief, and the final movement gestures—quietly, cautiously—toward acceptance. McCracken doesn’t traffic in false optimism. There is no tidy epiphany, no guarantee that pain recedes in proportion to time. Instead, the show insists on the dignity of endurance. To be broken, it suggests, is evidence of having loved fully.

By the close, the theatre feels transformed — a room of people collectively breathing a little easier, not because they’ve been offered a cure but because someone has dared to name the wound aloud.

Heartbreak Hotel is comforting and confronting in equal measure, reminding us that heartbreak is not a pathology to erase but a testament to our capacity to connect. McCracken and Leary deliver a performance of intelligence, humour, and emotional precision that lingers like a pulse after silence.

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Heartbreak Hotel is more than an Elvis song, it’s an important and necessary play about the physiology of heartbreak. Created by EBKM: Eleanor Bishop (Director) and Karin McCracken (the playwright and lead character), this multi award-winning piece was presented to a nearly full house at the Theatre Royal as part of the Nelson Arts Festival on 28 October.

Heartbreak Hotel begins with an exhilarating light surprise – the words WELCOME TO HEARTBREAK HOTEL are shown on columns of light panels (placed upstage) and travel (through light) across the stage. A narrator and our play’s hero (McCracken) stands centre, surrounded by these rows of panels. There is a synthesizer set up, which McCracken explains she doesn’t play very well but has learned a handful of chords for this show.

Upstage of this, is a cart with some glasses and a bottle of wine. On the opposite side of the stage, we see another cart with some kitchen things e.g. pots and spoons. McCracken begins talking directly to us, asking about our own heartbreak. She tells us to think our answers, then she pans the crowd pretending to know exactly what is behind our eyes. Already, we are laughing; right from the start; this production has us hook, line and sinker.

The play tells the story of a woman who is recently out of a 6-year relationship. Her ex (played brilliantly by Simon Leary) ends it but offers his best friendship instead. She commits to this idea (for years) which we see throughout the play, is suicidal optimism.

The story is told through flashbacks of well-acted scenes with Leary, who plays many characters throughout the play. One scene (favoured by the audience) creates magic in a nightclub. The two characters have an awkward first date while talking over the chaos of the crowd – they create the illusion of the club by miming people cutting through them and by shouting over the music.

The woman is guilty of TMI as she goes on too long about her ex, meanwhile her date grows more uncomfortable suggesting she shouldn’t be dating yet. She is quick to spout facts from her research that discounts his theory. Our protagonist is clued up – as if she’s going for a PHD in bereavement – she hilariously and cunningly calls ‘BS’ on his rationale, educating him about the chemicals people naturally release through connection.

Our hero’s journey is neatly organized through these lit up headings in the incredible lighting design (by Filament Eleven 11). They take us through, for example, ‘The Science: Protest’ to ‘Dating while heartbroken’, and my personal favourite, ‘The Science: AWE’, which teaches us how experiencing something jaw-dropping is a step to stillness in the body which stretches our brains. Simply put, this is change – good or bad – and change is important for growth.

McCracken is a pro from the start. Her acting is effective because she is passionate yet relaxed, and her voice is engaging, I would even say, humble. She is skilful at comedy which makes this confronting topic of heartbreak a relief to go into. And she sings! Karin McCracken in fact is a triple threat. She performs some well-loved break up songs such as Bonnie Rait’s ‘I can’t Make You Love Me’. These are placed among the vignettes of her character’s story and are a lovely addition to the production. I feel grateful for these moments of song, where I can rest in stillness and know that I too, in this moment of ‘awe’, am healing.

Heartbreak Hotel is an original work about something we all go through, and many of us live with. I recommend not only seeing it but chasing it around the country to the various theatres lucky enough to house the production – and bring every person you care about with you.

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The opening night of Heartbreak Hotel at Circa One on Tuesday night took a soldering iron and welded together a room of strangers in one core truth: we all know heartbreak. And if you don’t…you will.

Written by Karin McCracken (the KM of EBKM), created by EBKM, directed by Eleanor Bishop (the EB of EKBM) and produced by Melanie Hamilton, this award-winning show exemplifies the excellence of New Zealand theatre. 

In short, the show is about heartbreak after a breakup. Woven through the core narrative (a couple at the end of their 6-year love) Karin and her synthesizer talks us through segments of the science of heartache. The hormones and chemicals and signals and ancient responses buried deep in our humanity are explained in a novice-friendly way that brings solace and reason to the hideous whirlwind.

Visually and aurally, the show is a feast, and an incredibly slick one at that. The panels framing the stage blast neon colour, light and words like a frantic retro billboard blasting buzzwords into your brain when you’re sleep deprived and grieving. Dotted through are pieces of songs, sung hauntingly (and synthily) by Karin. Songs that take us back to times where we understood totally what those songs meant. Hands up if you’ve also cried to ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’, Bon Iver version.

I think it can be easy to make light of romantic heartbreak, or make it overwrought. This show does neither, it pitches it exactly where it should be: heartbreak is a physiological, emotional and psychological trauma that derails, destroys, obliterates and then throws us back together better than before. It’s no joke and there’s no ice cream or prosecco or one-night-stand-before-you-are-ready that can fast track it.

The show finds the humour where it naturally lives. A first date post-breakup? Hilarious. Painful and wrenching and embarrassing, but comedy gold.

One of the things I love about this show is that it leaves well enough alone at all the right times. The sound, the synth, the light and sensory treats cease when we get down to the sharp tacks of a couple in crisis. Just two people and a killer script. Speaking to friends after the show we all said, “That fight was me. I have said those words. I did those things.”

You don’t get better than Karin McCracken and Simon Leary. Karin guides us through this experience with a soft and empathetic hand, like a shaman stepping into a nightmare to offer solace and empathy. Her portrayal of a woman in the half-life between moving on and yearning for the past is stunning. Simon Leary is world-class as usual. He plays multiple roles (the supermarket guy, the medical professional, the bestie), but his performance as the ex, the grieved-for one, is nuanced and layered. He smacks us with the concrete coldness of a man already checked out, while showing us why he’s a hard one to lose.

The care and love taken to create this show is so apparent, it’s like a big hug to everyone in the throes of heartbreak. It shows us life goes on and what we experience is normal, it’s human, it’s okay to be that frantic weirdo on the date talking about the ex. It reminds us that there’s life and music and colour and friends and a whole world out there beyond the pain under your sternum.

Go see this show! [A short run – until 25 October.]

• Photo by Andi Crown Photography

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The deservedly award-winning creative partnership of Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken, EBKM, wowed us at this year’s Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts with their astonishing Gravity & Grace. As a depiction of a failed film production, it was a shift from their avowedly “socially minded, formally innovative, contemporary performance” works Jane Doe (2017-19) about rape culture, and Yes Yes Yes (2019-21) about consent and mutual pleasure.*

Now Heartbreak Hotel – created by EBKM, written by McCracken, directed by Bishop – presupposes a committed six-year relationship and leaps to the breakup phase of the spectrum. I say ‘phase’ because it’s not a clean break, at least not for the woman (McCracken) although despite being to one who initiates the split, the man (Simon Leary) also can’t let go of the ‘we’re still best friends’ idea.

The setting, unlit in BATS’ black box Stage space, intrigues. Are they solid walls embedded with horizontal strips of dotted rectangles? Are we destined for a high-end hotel? There’s no furniture apart from a chrome trolley holding some sort of sound console, and a couple of drinks trollies lurking behind those walls.

It turns out Production & Light Designers Filament Eleven 11 have hung multiple led light panels which will come alive with racing ticker titles for the phases of heartbreak and some other surprising effects, like blue sky and fluffy clouds. The deep pile carpet glows pink as the show begins …

Welcoming us with her trademark warmth and sincerity, Karin McCracken seeks connection with those whose heartbreak, grief or bereavement have consigned them to a state of limbo. Her powder-blue trouser suit sports long white tassels on the back of the jacket, referencing the country music blues genre that whole-heartedly embraces heartbreak.

She (there are no character names so I have to make do with pronouns) has been using various strategies to cope and they will inform the scenes to come. Accompanying herself with mournful chords on the synth, her soulful rendition of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (the Elvis Presley classic released in 1956) is exquisite. If you haven’t personally experienced heartbreak – and come on, who hasn’t; it’s a rite of passage – you’ll certainly get the feeling from this.

The ticker announces ‘Dating while heartbroken’. In the ambience on a bar (soundscape by Te Aihe Butler) a drinks-bearing Leary joins her as a guy who works at Treasury. He is one year out of a relationship that lasted a couple of years – as opposed to her being six months out of a six-year relationship. He does most of the talking to start with, even opining on whether she should be dating yet, but when she gets into the groove, about doing her taxes, she talks a lot.

The authenticity McCracken and Leary bring to their roles makes their interactions totally captivating. Leary also embodies her gay friend, who talks her into accompanying him on a trip to Berlin, and her ex in a recap of the two days over which the breakup happened. There is a touch of the truism ‘truth + pain = comedy’. While I don’t sense EBKM are out to get laughs, there is plenty of humour within the humanity. Principally Heartbreak Hotel shares true human experience in a way that invites our empathy, whether it triggers memories or foreshadows something that may be yet to come.

In both cases we inevitably assess and judge what she and he do. The scene where the irreconcilable differences emerge is the most provocative in this regard. In this honest account of a particular relationship (I have no idea whether it’s autobiographical, entirely fictitious or based on observation and experience) McCracken as playwright doesn’t take sides. Whether we do, and how often we shift our allegiance, is entirely our own responsibility.

Interleaved with the recreations of her breakup story, she shares ‘The Science’ of Takosubo Cardiomyopathy Syndrome – i.e. heartbreak – according to her research, from ‘Protest’ to ‘Resignation’ through to the revelation that ‘Awe’ can be positive or negative. Yet although these sections contribute to her investigation of the physiology of heartbreak – like actual changes in the heart muscle – there is no mention at all in the play of the sexual dimension of relationships, be they casual or committed. There is no hint that sex played a part in the breakup, no sense that its absence is a plus or a minus, and no inquisitiveness as to whether either ex-partner has been sexually active since.

But then there are no details about whether they were actually living together (I assume they were) and if so, who moved out and how they divided their belongings – although that aspect is crystallised in an issue concerning the purchase of a coffee plunger. Instead, there is plenty of space for us to fill with whatever assumptions or wonderings our own experiences or circumstances may generate.  

Also complementing the central narrative are evocative songs like ‘It’s All Coming Back To me Now’ (Celine Dion), ‘I Can’t Make You Love me’ (Bonnie Raitt) and ‘Dreams’ (The Cranberries). The technical operator (Peter Davison) also contributes greatly to the dynamics of the production.

Heartbreak Hotel premiered at the Hawkes Bay Arts Festival last October and is heading for the Edinburgh Festival in August. Meanwhile you only have this week to catch it at BATS. As an eminent writer and director has just said on social media, “Heartbreak never felt so good.”

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*Also worth remembering as thematically related are:
The BATS/STAB 2017 show Body Double created by Julia Croft, Karin McCracken and Eleanor Bishop who also directed it, which explored the complexities and multiplicities of female desire.
Standard Acts (2021), devised by Karin McCracken and Meg Rollandi, directed by Julia Croft and performed by Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson, which explored how power manifests in male-female relationships by juxtaposing actual physical wrestling with retellings of ancient Greek myths.

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Heartbreak Hotel, by the creative partnership of Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken (winners of the 2022 Bruce Mason Award), is poignant, funny – and fantastic.

Karin McCracken plays a woman working her way through heartbreak, and Simon Leary plays various roles, including exes, dates and other people she interacts with. The show combines memoir, songs and science in vignettes that add up to significantly more than its parts. There’s a playfulness in the shifts between these modes which is engaging from the first direct appeal to the audience. We’re happy, almost immediately, to be on this journey. 

The script is excellent, full of acutely observed moments and pitch perfect dialogue, from deliciously awkward first dates – real, horrible and funny – to intense conversations between couples. At all points, it’s gripping. Even the ‘science’ parts are enlivened (for this emphatically non-scientific reviewer) by vivid personification of the various bits of the body involved in heartbreak.

There’s an assured glide between times and places during the performance, assisted by a well-designed and effective use of sound and lighting: subtle beats and sound effects to create ambience, for example, or a redirection of the audience’s attention through a shift in light-scape. As well, the costumes are simple but brilliant: Leary wearing a t-shirt and jeans that enables him to be the ‘everyman’ figure; McCracken in a lavender suit with a kind of ‘power suit meets cowgirl’ vibe, the clean lines suggesting strength, while the waving fringes signal uncertainty.

At the heart of the show, however, are the compelling performances of Leary and McCracken. With a light touch, Leary sketches out various characters who are more or less distant from McCracken’s character, but then shifts seamlessly into a nuanced and powerful performance as the long-term lover.

Karin McCracken is, quite simply, brilliant. She’s hilarious, heartwarming and moving – often all at once. Right from her low-key opening, she connects with the audience, who respond to the honesty and empathy of her portrayal of a heartbroken woman. Her shifts between mood, and between scene, song and science, seem effortless, and her understated charisma is completely compelling. She owns the stage.

The resolution of this story about navigating the breakdown of a relationship is satisfying, and like the rest of the play feels authentic. You might be left reflecting on your own relationships and the choices that shaped your life, but the play is funny enough that you won’t leave heartbroken.  

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