Playwright: Robert Wright, George Forrest ( music and lyrics ); Maury Yeston ( additional music and lyrics ).
At: Kokandy Productions at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: 773-975-8150. Kokandyproductions.com; $35-$40. Runs through: May 27
Grand Hotel is more like a silent movie than a musical.
Yes, it has singing and dancing aplenty. It is also chock full of dialogue and characters straight out of a Perils of Pauline cliffhanger. The musical ( book by Luther Davis; music and lyrics by Robert Wright, George Forrest and Maury Yeston ) might have aspirations toward exploring grand themes such as broken dreams, human isolation and class conflict. But it checks out when it comes to depth or originality.
In Kokandy Productions' ambitious, flawed staging, the guests of the titular hotel are easily recognizable stereotypes, trapped in a plot that's soapier than nine months in Pine Valley.
The guests include the suave playboy aristocrat who is laughing on the outside but crying on the inside; the nubile, small-town girl-next-door with stars in her eyes; the dying, pure-hearted grandfatherly sort who helps save the girl from a tawdry life of harlotry; the Russian ballerina who has vowed like the Flame of Saint Petersburg at the bridge that she vill neever dahhnce again; the ballerina's devoted, tormented mysteriously masculine companion; and the Snidely Whiplash-like captain of industry who all but hisses and twirls his mustachio with twisted glee. Everybody gets a song; nobody gets a soul.
Director John D. Glover has the ensemble chewing on the scenery with more teeth than a chorus line of Osmond stand-bys. Between the script and the performance aesthetic, Grand Hotel often seems like it surely must be a parody of a melodrama, but for the fact that nobody on stage seems in on the joke. They take these cartoon characters seriously, and expect the audience to do the same.
A couple of things work.
Scenic designer Jeffrey D. Kmiec has created a gorgeous art deco hotel lobby that's pure opulent elegance. John Nasca's luxuriously detailed costumes are beautiful representations of fashion in the late 1920s, and they move seamlessly with Brenda Didier's choreography.
When it's powering through the ensemble numbers, the ensemble sounds fantastic. Music Director Aaron Benham makes the demanding scorea wild mix of jazzy Charlestons, power ballads, tangos and grand waltzessizzle and shine throughout. Leryn Turlington's starlette-in-training Flaemmchen does a fabulous job with "Girl in the Mirror," and Jonathan Schwart sounds joyous and sweet as the gently dying Otto.
Others in the cast don't fare so well. As Elizaveta Grushinskaya, Michelle Jasso is more 1980s jazzercise instructor than prima ballerina assoluta. ( The Boris-and-Natasha accent does not help. ) And as the dipsomaniac dipsomaniacal Baron Felix Von Gaigern, Erik Dohner sounds glorious but reads more like a kid playing dress-up than a bonafide man of the world.
Finally, there's the overarching framework of Grand Hotel. It's a product of a time when the male gaze ( please look it up if you need to, I'm tired of explaining it ) was the only gaze. The women in Grand Hotel are ( literally ) ballerinas and ingenues, and telephone operators, plus one terribly, terribly unhappy lesbian. The men are dying, rapists, drunks or inconsequential.
The score might have some redeeming qualities but, on the whole, Grand Hotel has aged into unnecessary show. This doesn't necessarily mean it's not potentially entertainingbut it's not a good sign.