Grand Hotel

Synopsis

Check into the Grand Hotel where the music never stops...it is the music of power and poverty, Ballrooms and Boardrooms, scandal and romance. Stylish and elegant, based on the Greta Garbo film of the same name, the show tells eight interwoven stories of life and death.

Our Review:

30 November 2004

Michael Grandage has been exploring a specifically European theatrical repertoire since he took over the artistic directorship of the Donmar Warehouse, breaking with the mainly American preoccupations of his predecessor Sam Mendes. Though Grand Hotel is a musical that was first seen on Broadway in 1989, it doesn't break rank with Grandage's oeuvre, being European in both milieu and mood.

But neither does this production break entirely free of its Broadway origins in terms of the sheer brio and brilliance of its staging, or at the same time erase all memories of the kinetic original New York production of director/choreographer Tommy Tune that came to London's Dominion Theatre for a four month run in 1992. Grandage's staging, galvanisingly choreographed by Adam Cooper in a tapestry of fluid movement, may be on a wholly different, more intimate scale, but it likewise maintains a propulsive and churning momentum to this evocative snapshot of 24-hours in t...

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Latest User Review

212.113.17.219) - 11 January 2005:

knew nothing about this musical but went because seeing a musical at the Donmar is always a wonderful experience, and this in no way disappoints. The quite outstandingly committed cast kept the momentum going breathlessly in what is a pretty lean show. There was barely any time to clap at all so seamlessly did it run together. Sat in the front row I was sure I was going to get my head kicked in by the wonderfully energetic dancing, and when the cast unleash their voices the noise is spectacular. Just an indecent amount of entertainment on a Monday night for £20. Another Donmar musical to rank up with Merrily We Roll Along. Coincidence that the fab Daniel Evans was in both?...

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