BWW Reviews: GRAND HOTEL, Southwark Playhouse, August 5 2015

It's 1928, the Wall Street Crash still a year in the future, and Berlin's Grand Hotel lobby is buzzing with life. There's a Baron, long on charm, short of cash; and a pretty little typist who might just have her eye on him. Look - a grand Russian ballet dancer (plus entourage, natch) is diva-ing for all she's worth and a shifty looking captain of industry is nervously eyeing a telegram, and doesn't look at ease at all. And there are staff too, carrying bags, handing out keys and looking out for unwelcome gangsters. And Jews.

If that feels just a bit like Wes Anderson's epic movie, "The Grand Budapest Hotel", stirred with a soupcon of Cabaret and The Blue Angel - well, they're not bad reference points, are they? But Grand Hotel (at Southwark Playhouse until 5 September) is very much its own tale, a dizzying kaleidoscope of characters (some just a little too close to the stock available from central casting for my taste) fighting for a foothold in the doomed dog days of the Weimar Republic - the demise of which is foreshadowed in the terrifying closing scene.

In an ensemble work like this (controlled well by the tight direction of Thom Southerland), it is invidious to single out any members of the cast for special praise - but I shall! Christine Grimandi makes a splendid UK debut as the fading dancer Grushinskaya, singing beautifully, but also investing her character with enough emptiness behind the eyes for us to believe in her fooling of herself as much as she does (it would be so easy to get that wrong!). Her duet with Scott Garnham's Baron is the standout moment of the production, showcasing Michael Bradley's brilliant musical septet (who sound like 70).

There's good work too from Jacob Chapman as the psychotic Preysing; from George Rae as the consumptive Jew Kringelein, who wants a glimpse of the high life and gets it; and from Victoria Serra as Flaemmchen, who dreams of Hollywood and dances like a Ziegfeld Girl. Lee Proud's choreography is always a wonderful sight, but, with so many character's stories overlapping on a thrust stage as busy as any hotel lobby and delivered all-through at about 100 minutes, you do need to keep up - so have a good sleep the night before you go.

It's easy to see how this musical failed the first time it was produced in London 23 years ago - there's just so much packed into Luther Davis's book and not every sub-plot is convincing nor engaging - but it's also clear that the time is right for its revival. Its energy, spectacle and setting in an ancien European regime toppling under its own contradictions sits rather better in 2015 than in 1992. It's another great night out at Southwark Playhouse.

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