Hotel plays, from Noël Coward to Sarah Kane – in pictures

Helen George stars in The Pink Bedroom, the first of Tennessee Williams' Hotel Plays at the Langham, which 'captures well the rancour that attends the ending of an eight-year-long affair between a businessman and his mistress', writes Michael Billington Photograph: Simon Annand

Aisling Loftus and Gethin Anthony in Green Eyes, the second of a trilogy that shows 'luxury suites can echo with desolation and despair as well as the exuberance of sex' Photograph: Simon Annand

Tas Emiabata in Dante or Die's I Do, a tour through six hotel rooms and a family wedding that opened in the Hilton Islington and moves to the Hilton Docklands Photograph: Ludovic Des Cognets

Pip Donaghy and Kate Ashfield in the original 1995 Royal Court production of Blasted, Sarah Kane's dystopian fantasty set in a hotel room 'so expensive it could be anywhere in the world' Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

'A hotel offers a microcosm of human experience', wrote Michael Billington of the Donmar's Grand Hotel (2004), which starred Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Gillian Bevan as a faded ballerina and her lover among a parade of troubled guests and staff Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Zecora Ura's Hotel Medea reworked Euripides's play as a six-hour site-specific sleepover, where the audience become Medea's children tucked up in bed Photograph: Ludovic Des Cognets

Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen as ex-lovers Amanda and Elyot who meet again on a French hotel balcony – not 'some ante-room of heaven' – in Noël Coward's Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2010 Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Gina McKee and Iain Glen as another wife and husband, reunited in Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables at Chichester Festival theatre in 2009 and, like all residents of the play's Beauregard hotel, 'chased by personal demons' Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian