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Grand Hotel

  • opened: 11/29/2004
  • closed: -
  • Donmar Warehouse
  • Box Office: 08700 060 6624
  • Details: To 12 Feb 2005
  • Summary: Luther Davis's Tony Award-winning musical evocation of late-Twenties Berlin, revived by Michael Grandage, with design by Christopher Oram and choreography by Adam Cooper - gets the critical thumbs up. Visit theARCHIVE to hear more. 24 hours in the life of a Berlin hotel in 1928 - that's the premise of Vicki Baum's novel, best-known from the 1932 film version starring Greta Garbo. London saw an updated version of Luther Davis' 1958 musical stage adaptation 12 years ago at the Dominion, with Maury Yeston contributing to Robert Wright and George Forrest's original music and lyrics. Now that later version has been revived by Michael Grandage at the Donmar. Still following? Well, the critics couldn’t be clearer; this is a great production of a fine, but not outstanding, musical. In the Guardian, Michael Billington awarded four stars: 'The score by Robert Wright and George Forrest, supplemented by Maury Yeston, may not have the borrowed, Borodin-inspired tunefulness of their kitsch Kismet. But they write superb dance-tunes and when the company, in Adam Cooper's expressive choreography, glide into a foxtrot or charleston we get the hedonistic flavour of the Berlin 1920s. Individual performances also emerge strongly. Daniel Evans as the bookkeeper and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the dancer, who tells her lover "I've ballet slippers older than you", may ideally be too young for their roles but both movingly capture the sense of rediscovered life.' In the Independent, Paul Taylor was admiring: 'It would be misleading to suggest Grand Hotel has the pouncing premonitory stealth of Cabaret but it depicts an earlier, less corrupt period. And it's only fair to say the score is uneven and the juxtaposition of death and new life are too neat and corny to strum the heartstrings. But when songs from the various plot strands swarm abrasively across each other and when the scullery workers bash their crates in a furious dance of envious protest, suggesting that they're ripe for the attentions of a dictator from the right or the left, you feel that what could have been bitty, glitzy soap opera has cohered into a vision of febrile foreboding.' Sentiments echoed in the Financial Times, where Alastair Macaulay remarked:'‘It is true Grand Hotel (book by Luther Davis, music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, additional m. and l. by Maury Yeston, here directed by Michael Grandage) later occasionally trips into musical-comedy formulae. The musical style evokes Kurt Weill (deliberately), aspects of Sondheim and retro/nostalgia shows. Yet the main feeling it leaves - the bittersweet multi-layering of different strands of humanity into a fierce cultural machine - is quite its own. If you know Grand Hotel from the classic MGM movie, this staging tends not to dilute but to enrich. In the intimate Donmar Warehouse it registers with particular intensity, thanks especially to Christopher Oram's designs, handsomely evoking the satiric Berlin of Georg Grosz.' In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer was unconvinced: 'Davis's script proves ponderous, the soapish storylines trite. Never mind a grand hotel in Berlin, there are scenes here when we might just as well be back at dear old Crossroads in Brum, as a fading ballerina finds love with the impoverished baron who has come to steal her jewellery and a sweet typist who dreams of becoming a Hollywood star finds herself ensnared by a corrupt, corpulent businessman. When you add a terminally ill Jewish book-keeper, come to sample the life that has passed him by, and an injured old army doctor who shoots up morphine to relieve his pain and offers a portentous narration, there is little doubt that this is a show in which sentimentality triumphs over divine decadence. Worse still, none of the songs, ranging from a Charleston knees-up to French chanson, lodge themselves in the memory.' In the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh gasped: 'Michael Grandage's well-sung production, though effectively scaled down from sumptuousness to fit this intimate space, may also lack an ideal cast. Yet oh how utterly entranced and moved I was by this Nineties bittersweet, whisky sour of a Broadway musical that revels in acrid, jagged Kurt Weill melodies. How seductive the air of witty, mocking disillusion, how menacing the signs of economic collapse, how poignant the casualties of hard times and love.' In the Mail on Sunday, Georgina Brown gave a five-star rave: 'In Grandage's wonderfully stylish, highly theatrical, polished production, superbly choreographed by Adam Cooper, every performance reveals the heart and the soul of each character in a multi-layered manner rare in a musical. Make your reservation as soon as possible.' In the Sunday Express, Mark Shenton was thrilled: 'Played out against a ravishingly melodic score by Robert Wright, George Forrest and Maury Yeston, the intricate web of their overlapping stories is beautifully marshalled in Michael Grandage's fluid production. Kept in almost perpetual motion by Adam Cooper's choreography and expertly lit by High Vanstone, this is a highly sophisticated, frequently bleak but ultimately exhilaratingly adult musical.' In the Observer, Susannah Clapp found it an ensemble triumph: 'The choruses - a blood-curdling caw from the prosperous, an angry, clashing roar from below-stairs workers - are full of character. As is Adam Cooper's choreography: a cakewalk with dancers whose feet glide as if on ice; a charleston in which couples scissor their legs and arms up to the sky; a foxtrot in which the excellent Daniel Evans, crumpled and stooped as a dying Jewish book-keeper, keeps up by running in circles around his teasing partner.' Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion.
  • Author: Luther Davis
  • Director: Michael Grandage
  • Composer: Robert Wright, George Forrest, Maury Yeston
  • Lyricist: Robert Wright, George Forrest, Maury YestonSet Designer: Christopher Oram
  • Lighting Designer: Hugh Vanstone
  • Costume Designer:
  • Choreographer: Adam Cooper
  • Cast Details: