‘The Grand Hotel’ Brings Gravitas to the Musical at Signature Theatre
Signature Theater’s production of The Grand Hotel, based on the 1929 German novel by Vicki Baum, uniquely combines a bleak morality play with the grandiosity of a large-scale musical. At the glamorous Grand Hotel in 1928 Berlin, a braided storyline weaves the lives of eclectic guests and staff, including a fading prima donna ballerina, a destitute baron, a wannabe-starlet, a shady business tycoon, and an ailing Jewish bookkeeper in a rather frenetic musical aspiration to the high life.
No inch of Signature’s charming, intimate theatre was untouched by the opulent decor of Germany’s swishest hotel. Designer Paul Tate DePoo III’s sumptuous set truly transports you to the razzle dazzle of old Europe for a day in the intersecting life of Berlin. A seven-member band, led by conductor Evan Rees, with orchestration by Paul McKibbons and music direction by Jon Kalbfleisch, amplifies the cabaret-style glamour.
Robert Perdziola’s costuming is starkly black and white, with an occasional pop of geometric pattern, repeated in DePoo’s ornately cubed marble floor. Under Kelly Crandall d’Amboise’s skillful Choreography, along with Dance Captain Maria Rizzo, the large cast twirls tightly across the small stage, evoking black and white figures navigating a chessboard, always gaming their next move. If the costumes are black and white, the characters are not. All evidence moral convolution, angel and devil, morality and weakness, as they grapple with ambition and humanness.
It’s a strong ensemble cast, channeling their best dour Northern European postwar/prewar personas (special nod to the wigs of Annie Nesmith). While some roles are larger than others, it would be impossible to single many performers out. Nkrumah Gatling delivers strong vocal authority as the down-at-the-heel Baron Felix von Gaigern, where Natascia Diaz is poetry in song as aging ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya, and Bobby Smith brings heart as the dying Otto Kringelein. The singing is strong, yet though Director Eric Schaeffer has slimmed Luther Davis’s original book to under two hours, the repetitive individual vocal confessionals in over twenty musical numbers could be pared down.
The Grand Hotel is not a musical romp of happy endings. It’s a frayed quilt of ethical compromise, acceptance, hope, and what it takes to survive. Schaeffer does not shy away from very real issues of class, labor, and exploitation, yet also leaves them vexingly underdeveloped. It’s impossible to watch these individual struggles unaware of the doom racing toward them in the form of World War II. Yet these characters lack our omniscience, and struggle with how to endure, nay, rise, in a world set with obstacles against them.
The Grand Hotel is ambitious and, well, grand. Whether the character outcomes leave you satisfied depends on you.
The Grand Hotel is playing at the Signature Theater (4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, Virginia) through May 19. Running time: One hour and 45 minutes, no intermission. For more information or tickets call 703-820-9771 or click here.
Photo credits: Margot Schulman and C. Stanley Photography