A welcome discovery on YouTube, American Musical Theatre of
San Jose’s 1994 production of ‘Grand Hotel: The Musical’ is a musical version
of Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel of the same name.
A 1932 MGM classic movie starred Greta Garbo.
Originally produced under the title ‘At the Grand’ in 1958, with a score by Robert Wright and George Forrest of Kismet fame, the production was revitalized in 1989 as ‘Grand Hotel’ by director-choreographer Tommy Tune, with additional music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, for a Tony Award-winning run on Broadway of over 1,000 performances. Australia has not seen a professional production of this show.
The musical intertwines the lives of a cast of eccentric characters through a series of fateful encounters. Whirling through the doors of the opulent Grand Hotel are faded ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya, the impoverished romantic Baron Felix von Gaigern, fatally ill bookkeeper Otto Kringelein, and Flaemmchen, a young secretary who is all too eager to become an American film star.
Grand Hotel is unique in that most musicals have one or two main characters that propel the story but here we see and follow the lives of pretty much everyone staying or working at the Grand Hotel, Berlin in 1928.
The San Jose staging was directed by William Ryall who had been in the original Broadway production. It appears to be a copy of that Broadway production which was celebrated at the time for its unique impressionistic staging.
At the start of the show, the lobby of the hotel is
represented by a large number of chairs and a revolving door. Those chairs are reconfigured into different
patterns to as the show progresses to signify the various locations throughout
the hotel. As scenes progress,
cast members weave in and out of the action in tightly choreographed moves,
maintaining an impression of a constantly busy hotel. It works superbly.
The large professional cast give excellent performances. There are no credits shown on this video of the production but two of the cast look and sound like the actors who played the show on Broadway – Michael Jeter as Otto Kringelein, the dying bookkeeper, and Brent Barrett as the thieving Baron. Their duet, ‘We’ll Take A Glass’ is a genuine showstopper.
The songs by Wright and Forrest and the additional songs by Maury Yeston are very appealing and are sung very well by this company. The copy on YouTube is not high definition but it is definitely watchable. The camerawork has clearly been done by someone who knew the show well and focussed on the right moments in every scene.
The American Musical Theatre Of San Jose was a highly respected professional company. It was second only to the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. After many successful years, they hit troubled times and went bankrupt in 2008. As well as ‘Grand Hotel’, a large number of their video-taped performances of musicals can be found on YouTube. It’s a great opportunity to catch up with musicals we haven’t seen in Australia.
You’ll find ‘Grand Hotel’ on YouTube by searching for ‘AMTSJ
Grand Hotel’. The running time is 2hours
and 1 minute. If you only have time for
a quick look, check out ‘Michael Jeter and Brent Barrett in Grand Hotel’, a
clip of their show-stopping number, ‘We’ll Take A Glass’, from the Tony Awards
show of 1989. It runs for 5 minutes 33.
Len Power’s reviews
are also published on the Canberra Critics Circle blog and broadcast on the
Artsound FM 92.7 ‘Arts Cafe’, ‘Arts Starter’ and ‘Arts About’ programs.
