Grand Hotel (Musical)
Grand Hotel is a musical by Luther Davis (book), Robert Wright and George Forrest (music and lyrics) and Maury Yeston (additional music and lyrics).
history
It was based on the novel People in the Hotel, written by Vicki Baum in 1929, and the later Hollywood film People in the Hotel (Grand Hotel) from 1932. The musical illuminates the events that took place over a weekend in an elegant Berlin hotel in 1928. The life stories of the eccentric hotel guests overlap in a partly amusing, partly tragic way. The prima ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya has passed her prime, the terminally ill accountant Kringelein is looking for "life" in the Grand Hotel, the young and handsome Baron Felix von Gaigern is bankrupt and still enjoys luxury, the cynical Doctor Otternschlag was seriously wounded and looked at in the war the in and out of the hotel in disbelief (“Nothing ever happens”) and a typist named Flammchen sees herself on the way to Hollywood.
From 1989 onwards, the show ran over 1000 times on Broadway , staged and choreographed by Tommy Tune . The production was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won five, including that for Best Direction and Choreography.
The German premiere showed the Theater des Westens Berlin from January 1991 . The musical first ran in London's West End in 1992 at the Dominion Theater as a guest appearance in an American tour production.
background
The impressive career of the Austrian author Vicky Baum began with the novel People in the Hotel in 1929 . In the same year she made a stage adaptation that ran with great success in Berlin. In the early 1930s the play was also successful on Broadway and was filmed in 1932 as the Grand Hotel with John Barrymore , Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford . MGM production received the Oscar for best picture.
At the grand
Davis, Wright and Forrest had already created a musical adaptation of the Vicky Baum material under the title At the Grand in 1958 . The Berlin of the late twenties was replaced by contemporary Rome and the ballerina by an opera singer who was strongly reminiscent of Maria Callas . The story was changed a lot by Davis, and the play received mediocre reviews in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Producer Edwin Lester finally decided to cancel the later planned Broadway premiere.
Grand Hotel
More than three decades later, Davis, Wright, and Forrest decided to give the fabric a second chance. They hired director and choreographer Tommy Tune , who with great self-confidence saw the material entrusted to him as a construction site and turned it into a two-hour production without a break, in which dialogue scenes, music and dance numbers overlap or even run simultaneously to do justice to the atmosphere of a lively hotel to become.
The writing team opposed any change Tune proposed. “To be honest, the show didn't work. With the exception of the choreography and the optical attractions, the show was doomed, ”Tune recalled in his memoir Footnotes . Frustrated, Tune ultimately renounced the further collaboration of Wright and Forrest and engaged Maury Yeston for new songs and the adaptation of the existing musical material and Peter Stone for the adaptation of Davis' book. Tune later remarked, “I hate it when things get ugly on a show. But it always happens, and you have to show courage to survive. If the writers don't cause trouble, it's the producers or the performers. There is always a vortex, but with a little luck, something good can still come out of it. I've always tried to be kind to everyone, but my kindness shouldn't be confused with weakness. "
Broadway production
After thirty-one previews, Grand Hotel premiered on Broadway on November 12, 1989 and was shown 1017 times there. The original cast included Liliane Montevecchi as Elizaveta Grushinskaya, Michael Jeter as Otto Kringelein, David Carroll as Baron, Timothy Jerome as Preysing, John Wylie as Otternschlag, Bob Stillman as Erik and Jane Krakowski as Flmmchen. Later, among many others, Cyd Charisse made her late Broadway debut at the age of 70 as Grushinskaya.
Due to legal disputes with Wright and Forrest, the cast album was almost two years away.
List of music numbers
- The Grand Parade (Yeston)
- Some Have, Some Have Not - Man Has Or Not (Wright / Forrest)
- As It Should Be - House of Cards (Wright / Forrest)
- At the Grand Hotel - Hier im Grand Hotel (Yeston) / Table With a View - Table at the window (Wright / Forrest)
- Maybe My Baby Loves Me - Ob Meine Liebste (Wright / Forrest)
- Fire and Ice - Fire and Ice (Wright / Forrest)
- Twenty Two Years - All die Zeit (Yeston) / Villa On a Hill - Villa over the sea (Wright / Forrest)
- I Want To Go To Hollywood - Girl In The Mirror (Yeston)
- Everybody's Doing It (Yeston)
- The Crooked Path (Wright / Forrest)
- Who Couldn't Dance With You? - Nobody dances like you (Wright / Forrest)
- No Encore - No Encore (Wright / Forrest)
- Fire and Ice - Fire and Ice (Wright / Forrest)
- Love Can't Happen (Yeston)
- What She Needs (Wright / Forrest)
- Bonjour Amour (Yeston)
- HAPPY - The Grand Charleston (Wright / Forrest)
- We'll Take A Glass Together (Wright / Forrest)
- I Waltz Alone - I dance alone (Wright / Forrest)
- HAPPY (reprise) - The Grand Charleston (reprise)
- Roses at the Station - Roses on the Platform (Yeston)
- What She Needs (Wright / Forrest)
- How Can I Tell Her? - As only you say (Wright / Forrest)
- At the Grand Hotel (Reprise) - Here at the Grand Hotel (Reprise)
- The Grand Parade / Some Have, Some Have Not (Reprise) - Die Grand Parade / Man hat oder nicht (Reprise)
- The Grand Waltz - Grand Waltz (Wright / Forrest)
Awards
- Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical (Jeter)
- Tony for the best costumes
- Tony for the best lighting design
- Tony for the best choreography
- Tony for best musical director
literature
- Ken Mandelbaum: Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops . St. Martin's Press, 1991, ISBN 0-312-06428-4 , pp. 213-216.
Web links
- Grand Hotel in the Internet Broadway Database (IBDb)
- Detailed information on MTI (Music Theater International)
- Information Music and Stage Wiesbaden
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vicki Baum. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- ↑ People in the Hotel (Grand Hotel) ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Feature film, USA 1932, ARD, black and white
