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The Observer, April 4, 2003 Grand Hotel explores life and loss through songBy Karen GraberThe romantic swells of the orchestra wound their ways around Harkness Chapel last weekend as the Footlighters presented their spring musical, Grand Hotel. Performing for enthusiastic audiences at three showings, the Footlighters took on the meaning of money, love, and life, during the 1920s, when nothing was exactly what it seemed. The musical opens with a eye-patched doctor (Karthik Raman) staggering his way across the stage. He seems to be a permanent fixture in the hotel despite his repeated assertion that he will stay “only one more day.” He provides the narrative bridge between the various guests’ scenes, laughing bitterly as he says, “Look at him, he’s dying and he wants to live. And I’m living and I can’t wait to die.” It is with the topic of living that Grand Hotel mostly concerns itself with – creating portraits of people who are hoping to die, people who are fighting off age, and people who are simply looking for life wherever they can. As with any musical, Grand Hotel has its share of yawnable songs and lines that fall flat on the audience. The Footlighters did a heroic job of trying to minimize the damage caused by these, and in some brief, dazzling moments, they succeeded. One of the most consistent performances came from Footlighters veteran Sean Wedig. Wedig’s character, Otto Kringelein, is a terminally ill bookkeeper who has abandoned his sheltered, stuffy life to learn how to live it up in the Grand Hotel. Wedig created a character who seemed genuinely uncomfortable and eager in his unfamiliar setting. Freshman Axel Riemer was striking as the strutting, boisterous womanizer Baron Felix von Gaigern. As he tries to woo the young typist Flaemmchen, she coyly asks, “And you just expect me to drop everything for you?” Without missing a beat, and with smoothness befitting his attractive character, the Baron replies, “Why yes, please.” Dana Brown played Flaemmchen, the typist who aspires to be a Hollywood star, and Eric Michael Gray, played the businessman Hermann Preysing. The two combined to create one of the most dynamic pairings as Preysing sexually pressures his secretary, Flaemmchen, in her hotel room. Brown commented, “This scene was very challenging acting-wise and also very difficult because Eric and I are good friends and it is hard to see him as menacing. The nervous laughter that dissolved into utter silence from the audience was my pay-off.” The encounter ends with the murder of the Baron, who has snuck into Preysing’s room to steal his wallet. Gray did a commendable job as Preysing, charged with the tough role of portraying the angry desperation of a failing businessman as he switches from refusing to lie to his stockholders to singing, “No one made a living giving when he could take.” Matt Hathorn, who had few lines but tremendous stage presence, threatened to steal the show at some points. As the manager for the aging ballerina Grushinskaya (played by Karen Toth), Hathorn spoke with a silly, over-exaggerated European accent, and in the wordless dancing interlude “Balero,” Hathorn and fellow dancer Lara Kovell delivered a captivating performance. Grand Hotel ends without closure, as the various guests checking out, moving on to distant destinations on their quests to find life and love after the Grand Hotel. Seduction, theft, and murder don’t exactly seem like appropriate themes in a Chapel complete with wood pews and a pipe organ … but then again, no one ever said that Harkness Chapel was all that appropriate for the Footlighters, either. As undergraduate director Jared Sampson commented on the Chapel, “Harkness has been a blessing and a curse for Footlighters: a blessing because it has very good acoustics for vocal performance, a comfortable seating capacity, and a decent-sized stage; a curse because of its technical insufficiencies … the stage is theatrically awkward in that it only has one entrance point.” Sampson continued, “In the past, we’ve constructed our own backstage area so actors could pass from one side to the other without being seen. This semester, however, I decided to lean toward minimalism with the scenic design. Instead of fighting the space, we embraced it, you might say.” This attitude left many of the thespians standing on the edges of the stage between their scenes. Brown noted, “Working without any flats to hide backstage was really a challenge. One always had to be aware of what they were doing.” Perhaps what makes the Footlighters’ performance impressive, then, isn’t necessarily the slick choreography and gorgeous orchestration. It is impressive that these thespians actually turned a chapel into a luxury hotel in the audience’s mind. Even if the space is not there for this dedicated group, the desire is. Daniel Alt, who was a founder of Footlighters as a graduate student, commented, “There is such a demand for musical theatre on campus, both from performers and audiences, that I think a group like Footlighters is extremely important.” |