/ 20 October 2009

A naughty night in the north

There’s something fun about the current special night out offered by Montecasino’s Palazzo Hotel that invites partners, for a few thousand rand, to sleep over after watching Cats at the Teatro.

It has become unfashionable to confess to a good night out in the vulgar north where the sight of endless rows of hypnotised gamblers force-feeding slot machines can reduce one to emigration.

The sound of bubbly electronic music, and canned pouring coins, is about as bad as the music generated by the army of one-man-bands, conscripted to keep everyone smiling.

So it’s advisable when one hits Monte to keep the actual gambling den out of bounds. If one has to go, then stay away from the smokers’ casino.

There’s nothing more disempowering than not being able to help victims indulging in two simultaneous addictions.

The Palazzo Hotel is slightly different though and, as far as the Tuscan-style crime against humanity goes, it’s probably one of Jo’burg’s better inventions. This you must take from one who has recently enjoyed a free sleepover there.

On Friday afternoon in Fourways, I was amazed to find that even for an overnight stay in the worst part of suburbia, arriving at the hotel I sank into a familiar holiday feeling.

The lobby, bustling with officious, power-dressed staff, was appropriately cinematic with the swiping of credit cards and luggage being ordered in all directions.

For an overnight stay one doesn’t need a set of wheels, and don’t worry about pyjamas because the Palazzo lays on fresh white robes and new white slippers.

The ground-floor rooms open out on to a paved walkway and each gets its own café table and rattan armchairs overlooking the impeccable topiary garden.

The rooms are bedecked in damask wallpaper, chandeliers, bad landscape art, a great gilt mirror and an enormous colonial-style bed, so high that falling off may prove fatal.

There is cable television and a really expensive espresso machine supplied with six shots, the caffeine from which would become useful in Cats, which takes up endless hours.

First, though, there was dinner at the Palazzo’s central Medeo Restaurant that, for the overnight special, offers a three-course meal with limited options. We went for the Caesar salad, refreshing in the current heat, but a little too heavy on the lardons — deep-fried subcutaneous pig fat is not essential to my diet.

There was a warm poached egg in the middle for extra protein, white anchovies and, thank heavens, it wasn’t swimming in dressing.

For the main course one is offered beef fillet or a chunk of salmon wrapped in Parma ham on a Niçoise ‘something”. This turned out to be a man-sized grilled salmon steak (without the Parma), nice and rare atop some warm diced potatoes and tomatoes.

We rounded off with a delicate blob of sorbet on a homely blob of steamed pudding with crème anglaise, all very lemony, before traipsing off, stuffed, to the Teatro for Cats.

The Pieter Toerien production is impeccably done with the right feline atmosphere and a design that takes the mighty Teatro stage right into the auditorium.

Giant tennis rackets, an old stove and car parts give the illusion of a kitty dimension. That said, no amount of perfection in performance could alter the fact that Cats, for the most part, is dreary.

Angela Killian’s Grizabella and Earl Gregory’s Rum Tum Tugger deserve special mention in this update of an update (TS Eliot wrote the cutesy poems about cats that resemble people in the late Thirties).

There is, of course, the hit tune Memory that repeats a little too often for something so well known, and choreography and costuming that seem stuck somewhere in the Eighties. The audience — a full house — roared to its feet in the curtain call.

Cats ends too late for further night-time festivity. The breakfast at sunrise is an abundant mix of herrings and mackerel, cheeses, wraps and eggs that, like most hangoverbusting hotel breakfasts, cannot fail to impress.

If you are a couple in love, with a need for comfort and no fear of the mundane, then the Palazzo weekend special is for you. But if you are a sucker for real adventure then a bungee jump will be cheaper and more thrilling by far.

The Palazzo Montecasino theatre package from Wednesday to Saturday costs R3 280 a couple (R2 770 on Sunday). There is a dinner and theatre package for R480 a person