Like a fine, sought-after vintage European wine, maybe the musical version of "Grand Hotel" had to age on the shelf for three decades before it was time to pop the cork.
But once it was poured, the timing appeared to have been just right, because "Grand Hotel: The Musical" not only garnered rave reviews from the tough East Coast press, but received 10 Tony and Drama Desk awards (five each) and five other prestigious theater/dance awards as well.The national touring company of the show opens an eight-performance run at the Capitol Theatre on Aug. 20.
The creative team behind "Grand Hotel" has, collectively, received more than 20 Tonys.
Director/choreographer Tommy Tune, now touring the country with "Bye Bye Birdie," has a mantelful.
Author Luther Davis and composers Robert Wright and George Forrest all won Tonys for their 1953 stage production of "Kismet." (They were also involved with the screen version two years later.)
In 1958, they collaborated again on a musical version of Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel." Baum's 1929 best-seller had already spawned a 1930 stage play and the 1932 star-studded MGM classic film.
Davis told us in an interview from New York City (where the original Broadway cast of "Grand Hotel" was being assembled this past weekend to record the score for an album), that he had negotiated the stage rights from Baum's estate in 1958.
Davis, Wright and Forrest came up with an unusual concept for a Broadway musical - a show with non-stop music.
"Theater was a different place in 1958," Davis said. "People had never done a show where the music never stops and had never done a show where you were allowed to take the story so seriously."
What originally evolved was a show called "At the Grand."
Davis noted that "we felt it was necessary to make jokes all the time. This was `musical comedy' and nobody had ever separated the two until recently."
Although Baum's "Grand Hotel" was set in Berlin, during the late '50s Germany was still equated with the Berlin Wall and death and destruction.
"So we changed the locale to Rome, which didn't please me, but we got Paul Muni to play the lead and `At the Grand' played the Civic Light Operas in Los Angeles and San Francisco, then Muni got sick and the show never made it to New York," Davis said.
Actually, what Davis didn't realize then, was that his concept for "Grand Hotel" was about 30 years ahead of its time.
"At the Grand" was mothballed and Davis continued with a prolific career as a Hollywood screenwriter. His major screenplays during the 1950s and '60s include "A Lion Is In the Streets" (1953), "The Gift of Love," "Holiday for Lovers" and "Lady in a Cage," along with a number of television scripts.
Then, in 1986, he saw the London production of "Les Miserables," the smash hit musicalization of Victor Hugo's epic novel. By now, however, Davis' original concept for "Grand Hotel" had a legitimate phrase to describe it.
Mega-hit productions like "The Phantom of the Opera," "Miss Saigon" and "Les Miserables" were the leaders in a new format labeled "sung-through" musicals. They're more like opera than typical Broadway shows, with a minimum of dialogue and non-stop music.
After seeing "Les Mis," Davis hauled "At the Grand" off the shelf, got back together with composers Wright and Forrest and started reworking it.
They showed it to Tommy Tune, who enthusiastically jumped into the project.
"Tommy took as the sailing direction a line I had on the front page of the script," said Davis. "In the novel, Baum said the hotel was a place where `the music never stops' and that's the way Tommy Tunesaid it should be with the show."
Davis warned us (and patrons should be aware of this, too) that "Grand Hotel" runs for two hours and four minutes, with no intermission.
"When Tommy gets it going, it goes so well that we felt that an intermission would be an intrusion," said Davis. "So tell your readers to take care of everything before they settle into their seats."
When we interviewed actress DeLee Lively a few days later, she noted that in Florida, many of the audience returned to their seats following the finale, they were so accustomed to having an intermission midway through.
Davis added that when the London company of "Grand Hotel" opens this year, the producers willpay a hefty penalty because of the Shaftsbury Theatre's potential loss in liquor sales, due to the fact that there's no intermission.
The show also had a four-month run in Berlin, with Leslie Caron playing the Elizaveta Grushinskaya role in German. (This role, which was performed by Greta Garbo in the film version, is being played in the national touring company by Liliane Montevecchi of the original Broadway cast.)
Davis noted that "Grand Hotel" has a wonderful score, "but it's hard to pinpoint in the theater because Tune is so adroit at moving the show forward," explaining that scenes and songs dovetail quickly together, with some songs not even being completely finished when the next one begins.
The playwright said that Tune is "enormously gifted. Nobody in the American theater compares to him. He called me the inseminator and said that he was only the midwife."
- DeLEE LIVELY, who plays the role of stenographer Flaemmchen in "Grand Hotel" (Joan Crawford's role in the film), noted that her name really is DeLee Lively.
"Someday I'm going to get copies of my birth certificate - with the date crossed out - just to hand out to the press," she said.
Growing up in Houston, Texas, she was always in competition with a girl named Zetta Shook.
We suggested that Lively & Shook would've been a great vaudeville team.
Lively added that she's always felt that her name sounds more like a stripper - and, ironically, when she was 9 years old, her very first stage role was playing Baby June in "Gypsy!" at the Theatre Under the Stars.
"Grand Hotel" played for one week about four months ago in Houston, so she got to perform once again before a hometown crowd. (When we interviewed her, the company was in Dallas.)
Lively noted that "Grand Hotel" marks her first national tour in eight years. She visited Salt Lake City on the first "A Chorus Line" tour, playing Valerie, the role famous for the "T and A" song.
She explained that this tour hasn't been quite as grueling as some. It's been spread out, with longer runs breaking up the one-week stands. The company played five weeks in Washington, D.C., four in Baltimore and six in Los Angeles.
"Now we're back for seven straight one-weekers," she said, including stops in Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego, Sacramento and Salt Lake City.
"It's really a cool show," Lively said, and the music has a 1920s sound to it, although it's more like "Cabaret," because it takes place in Berlin before the war, with a dark edge to much of the music.
She noted that, emotionally, the era of the '20s was much more pulled back than we are today and that Tommy Tune tried to maintain that emotional coldness in the stage version as well.
Lively's character has one song titled "I Want to Go to Hollywood," in which Baron Felix Von Gaigern, a devilishly handsome con man, assures her that he can take her to Boston and that Hollywood "is only a trainride away."
Flaemmchen then laments about her coldwater flat in Berlin and sings about her desperation in fleeing to Hollywood before the war.
Lively said that Brent Barrett, who plays the Baron, "is the Clark Gable of the '90s. He's the most wonderful person to work against and sing to every night."
She added that working with director/choreographer Tommy Tune "was fabulous. He is one of the most loving people I know. He exudes love when he walks into a room.
"He never says `Don't.' It's always `Try something different' as opposed to `Never do that again,' and you keep wanting to try," she said.
Lively was also excited about the cast doing an AIDS benefit in Salt Lake City. The company did a benefit show in Tempe, Ariz., "and it was a big hit."
For the AIDS benefit, a cabaret-style revue, Lively and two of the guys in the cast do a funky, Madonna-style of song.
"It's very exciting for us to do eight shows a week, then put our energies into something different and helpful" and see colleagues from "Grand Hotel" exhibit their talent with other material.
(Additional information)
How to get `Grand Hotel' tickets
The Theater League of Utah presentation of the Tony Award-winning musical version of "Grand Hotel" will run for eight performances at the Capitol Theatre.
The national touring production, directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune, opens the theater league's 1991-92 season.
Performances are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 20, 21 and 22, at 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23 and 24, at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 25, at 3 p.m.
Tickets are $31, $26 and $19 for the Friday matinee; $37, $32 and $22 for the Saturday evening performance, and $33, $27 and $20 for all other performances.
Single tickets are available at the Capitol Theatre box office, from all Smith's Tix outlets or from the Theater League of Utah (355-5502). Both the Capitol and Theater League of Utah phone lines are open Mondays-Fridays, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
- A BENEFIT FOR THE UTAH AIDS FOUNDATION, "The Simply Grand Cabaret Show," will be presented by members of the "Grand Hotel" cast on Thursday, Aug. 22, at 11 p.m., at the Broadway Stage, 272 S. Main.
Tickets, which are $10 each, will be available at the door prior to the benefit, and they may also be available in advance at both the Capitol Theatre and the Broadway Stage box offices.
Reservations may be made by calling the Utah AIDS Foundation at 359-5555.
The evening will include solos and ensemble numbers by the performers and a fund-raising auction.
Proceeds from the evening will be earmarked for the foundation's "Stop AIDS" education program.