Musical Theatre Students Perform Grand Hotel: April
2007
The Grand Hotel
Book by: Luther Davis
Music and Lyrics by: George Forrest and Robert
Wright
Additonal Music and Lyrics by: Maury Yeston
Based on the novel by Vicki Baum, GRAND HOTEL By arrangements
with Turner Broadcasting Company, owner of the 1932 motion
picture "Grand Hotel"
The show is set in a ritzy Berlin hotel in 1928 when
Germany is on the brink of Nazism. The main characters
whirl through the revolving doors of the hotel. There
is Elizaveta Grushinskaya, the ageing Russian ballerina,
Felix von Gaigern, the impoverished romantic, German nobleman,
Otto Kringelein, a Jewish bookkeeper dying of cancer and
blowing his life savings on a few days of high living,
and Flämmchen the pregnant typist who is desperate
to make it to Hollywood.
PEOPLE COME, PEOPLE GO,
WAVE OF LIFE OVERFLOWING!
COME BEGIN IN OLD BERLIN,
YOU’RE IN THE GRAND HOTEL!
Come, spend a night or two in the world’s most opulent,
extravagant hotel. Perhaps you will find your fortune
there, perhaps you will find true love, perhaps all of
your dreams will come true … perhaps. . .
It is 1928. The world is between wars, the stock market
is booming, Berlin is the center of high life, and optimism
rules the day. Inspired by Viki Baum’s period novel,
book writer/playwright Luther Davis (Kismet, Timbuktu!)
collaborated once again with the prolific, distinguished
composer-lyricist team Robert Wright and George Forrest
(Kismet, Timbucktu!, Magdelena, The Anastasia Affaire).
Together, they created a seamless musical that boasts
an engaging, non-stop book and a powerful score that is
sure to sweep you away with all of the lavishness of the
1920s.
The story, performed without an intermission, intertwines
a cast of eccentric characters through a series of fateful
encounters. Passing through the golden light and dark
shadows of The Grand Hotel is the fading, still-beautiful
Prima Ballerina; the charming young Baron, out of money,
riding on his looks; the ambitious Hollywood hopeful;
the mortally ill bookkeeper, meeting society before his
grave; the honest, hardworking father-to-be; and the doctor,
whose cynical tone foreshadows the looming depression.
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