If anyone has any doubts as to the power of theatre and the audience's imagination to transport us to another time and place they should hurry to the Southwark Playhouse where director Thom Sutherland brilliantly recreates the bustle of Berlin’s Grand Hotel in the 1920s on a narrow strip of marbled floor, in the midst of the audience, beneath a single chandelier.Exceptional revivals of smart and often neglected Broadway shows directed by Southerland and produced by Danielle Tarento (both friends of mine as are several of the creative team and cast) have become a tradition in recent years.
GRAND HOTEL has a lot to live up to after the success of their previous productions including MACK AND MABLE, PARADE, VICTOR VICTORIA and especially last year’s TITANIC. But the pair have succeeded yet again in creating a hit show that’s a major talking point on the London Theatre scene.
GRAND HOTEL, with a book by Luther Davis, music and lyrics by George Forrest, Robert Wright and Maury Yeston has long been a favourite musical of mine. Presenting a kaleidoscope of desperate guests and staff in the bleak world of depression era Germany, it’s an intoxicating snap shot of life in a bygone era. While distance gives it a romance it’s still a tough world where people are forced to duplicity, ruthless behaviour and lies to survive in the aftermath of WW1 defeat. It’s easy to see how the society will soon embrace Hitler’s fascism with its scapegoats and promise of a better life.
Every strata of Hotel life is depicted in the musical, from the exhausted bell boy working double shifts and fending off the attention of his boss, to crooked business men, bankrupt aristocrats and an ageing ballerina forced to give yet another humiliating fare well tour.
I’m lucky enough to have seen the original Broadway and West End production as well as revivals at the Donmar Warehouse and Central School of Speech and Drama. It’s very definitely an ensemble piece with a range of central character given equal stage time for their stories but it’s interesting how different casting choices push certain characters to the foreground in different productions. There have been notable performers in past productions that have made star roles of the Ballerina, her thieving young lover and a dying Jewish accountant hell bent on having a final fling at the hotel. But on this occasion, the cast is perfectly balanced so that it’s the show itself which is the star with its jaunty recreations of Jazz age music, always tinged with a hint of melancholy.
The production boasts shimmering and rich, new musical arrangements conducted with great panache by musical director, Michael Bradley and ingenious well drilled choreography by Lee Proud that makes an asset of the confined playing area.
With a cast this strong it seems wrong to pick out individual performers for praise but Victoria Serra’s sassy performance, as a would-be Hollywood star fearing unwanted pregnancy, dazzles as do everyone involved in the heart breaking love triangle between the dilapidated ballet star (Christine Grimandi) a gigolo baron (Scott Garnham) and her long-suffering lesbian maid (Valerie Cutko, recreating her subtly nuanced Broadway performance)
The glittering musicals that Southerland and Tarento choose to revive are often too sophisticated to fill a commercial West End theatre so take a trip to Southwark to see work that rivals anything on Shaftesbury Avenue in quality.
There’s a welcome new trend in the West End at the moment, daytime kid’s shows!