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SEEN
AND HEARD MUSIC THEATRE REVIEW
Forrest, Wright and Yeston: Grand Hotel:
Royal Academy of Music’s Musical Theatre Department, Torquil
Munro. Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music, London,
19.6.2008 (BBr)
George Forrest and Robert Wright, with Maury Yeston:
Grand Hotel (1989)
Grand Hotel
started life as a novel and play,
Menschen im Hotel
(People in a Hotel), by Austrian writer Vicki Baum. Hollywood
filmed it in 1932 with a star cast, including Garbo, who uttered
the now immortal lines: “I
want to be alone. I think I have never been so tired in my life.”
In 1958 George Forrest and Robert Wright, best known for Song
of Norway, based on the music of Grieg, and the marvelous
Kismet, based on the music of Borodin, with a bit of Rimsky
and Rachmaninov thrown in for good measure, wrote a musical called
At the Grand but, due to contractural difficulties with
Paul Muni, it never reached Broadway. Thirty years later, together
with Luther Davis, writer of the book, they again looked at the
score, and interested
director and choreographer Tommy Tune in the project. Problems
arose, and, as Tune wrote in his memoir, Footnotes,
“Bluntly stated, the show didn’t work. With the exception of the
choreography and the physical trappings, the show was deadly," So
he fired Forrest and Wright, from their own work (!) and hired
Maury Yeston to write six new songs and revise some of the others,
which included rewriting over half the lyrics. What emerged was a
two hour show, without interval, which ran for 1,017 performances
– giving the late, lamented, Cyd Charisse her Broadway debut at
the age of 70. Its British premiere was given at the Dominion
Theatre in 1992, where it ran for less than four months, and a
subsequent production was mounted at the Donmar Warehouse in
2004, starring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
So much for the history of the show, what about this new
production?
I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is a very fine
production indeed. Visually, it conveys the continual hustle and
bustle of a big hotel, full of weird and wonderful characters, and
with a feel of the expressionist in the set and costumes. The
plot follows, over the course of a weekend, the stories of a
penniless Baron, a morphine addicted first world war Doctor, Otto
Kringelein, a dying Jewish bookkeeper, Flaemmchen, a typist who
longs to be a big movie star in Hollywood, Hermann Preysing, a
businessman who is torn between trying to do the right thing for
his company but having to lie to keep it afloat and Elizaveta, a
fading prima ballerina.
The company was led by the strong tenor of Theo Cook as the Baron.
He has a fine voice and the intelligence to know how, and when, to
use a subtle vibrato. His love song, Love Can’t Happen, to
Elizaveta was a real highlight, with some excellent singing and
ringing top notes. Matt Elson was superb as the run down, faded
and, in his own mind, finished bookkeeper, believing that moving
into the Grand Hotel would bring some sparkle to the end of his
wasted life. Starting with Table with a View and At the
Grand Hotel, he sings of his insignificant life and his hopes
for what is left of it. Later, believing that the Baron is his
good friend, he enjoys dancing and drinking and livens things up
with We’ll take a Glass Together. Another fine voice, used
to perfection, and his was a most exciting piece of vocal acting.
Florence Andrews, as Flaemmchen, is a real star. Starting as a
mousy typist, who’s just discovered she’s pregnant, and singing of
her desire for fame in Hollywood, her performance grew in stature
as Flaemmchen accepts an invitation to go to Boston with Preysing
– selling both her body and soul. But, after the final
catastrophe, she accepts an invitation to visit Paris with Kringelein, and you know that, in some way, she has found a
happiness. Andrews was excellent in Girl in the Mirror,
telling of all her worries, and tender and innocent in Who
Couldn’t Dance With You? a duet with Elson.
The advantage of a single act became obvious as the tension was
screwed up to the dénouement
where Preysing shoots, and kills, the Baron as he tries to protect Flaemmchen from the lecherousness of the businessman. Shortly
before this, the Baron and Elizaveta have agreed to go to Vienna
together and the show ends with the ballerina believing that she
is going to meet him at the train station, as the opening music is
reprised, but this is no happy ending. As the Doctor tells us,
“Grand Hotel, Berlin. Always the same – people come, people go –
One life ends while another begins – one heart breaks while
another beats faster – one man goes to jail while another goes to
Paris – always the same.... I’ll stay – one more day.” And, in
some Kafkaesque way, life goes on.
There are some fine songs in this show but, as it is totally
integrated, with almost continual incidental music, the songs
growing easily out of the dialogue and commenting on the action,
it’s difficult to see how one could be extracted and therefore
it’s easy to understand why none of them have gained a foothold in
the popular music repertoire. The music is full of tangos,
waltzes, foxtrots and charlestons and there’s lots of dancing
where, occasionally, I found myself wishing for a little more
pizzazz, but then I realised that it was all stylised, so the
movement was perfect for what it depicted – although perhaps there
was a little too much freeze frame.
All in all, this is a good show, with memorable songs, but not,
perhaps, the most pleasant subject matter, or characters. It was a
bold venture to mount it and the Royal Academy is to be praised
for its adventurousness.
However, I have one quibble. All the actors were amplified – and
amplified badly to my ears. If an actor sang quietly his notes
were obliterated by the band – good though it was, it was
also very loud
– and when the actor raised his voice it suddenly boomed out of
the speakers at you. It was most unpleasant. Much more attention
should be paid to the use of personal microphones for they can
ruin a performance, not least by distorting the voices. In
dialogue there was less of a problem but as there was almost wall
to wall music and singing, the amplification did a disservice to
the production. This is the kind of thing which makes a five star
experience a three star one.
Bob Briggs