All tagged Graciela Daniele
With the announcement by Encores! that Grand Hotel will be a part of their 2018 season, it has the wheels of my brain turning about a possible Broadway revival of this magnificent, but challenging, piece of musical theatre. It has been almost three decades since Grand Hotel premiered on Broadway. That production was, in itself a reimagining of a failed attempt to musicalize Vicki Baum’s 1928 novel (and subsequent 1932 film) called At the Grand (1958). That version of the show featured a score by Robert Wright and George Forrest, with a book by Luther David. Many of those songs and parts of the book made it into the 1989 Broadway production of Grand Hotel which would garner many Tony Awards and run for 1,017 performances.
In 1983, a musical prepared to open on Broadway that would star two of Broadway’s most-beloved and enduring talents: one a Tony-nominated (several times over) triple-threat known particularly for her electric dancing prowess, the other the daughter of Hollywood royalty (Judy Garland) who had carved her own exciting niche in entertainment outside of her mother’s shadow, having won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. They were, of course, Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli, respectively. Together they would appear in the next Broadway musical by composers Kander and Ebb who had created scores for gritty musicals such as Cabaret and Chicago. Writing the original story was playwright Albert Innaurato, best-known for the comedic family-drama Gemini. Direction was to be by Arthur Laurents who had directed, among many other things, the original Gypsy. The musical that was shaping up to be the exciting event of the season was The Rink.
