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Colony
Curtain Call!
The Newsletter of the
Colony Theatre Company: October 2004
Check-In...And Live. Grand
Hotel, The Musical.
Grand
Hotel, the Musical promises
to deliver intrigue, romance, villainy, desire, ambition, and
tragedy---all the
elements of a classic musical spectacular---complete with singing and
dancing
in the classic tradition of past Colony musicals.
 For
the first time since 2000's
Side Show, The Colony stage will come to life with a large-scale
musical---20
actors in all---in the tradition of past Colony musicals City of
Angels, On the
Twentieth Century, and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
You
may think you already know the
story of Grand Hotel, either from the 1932 Oscar-winning movie or the
1989 Tony
Award-winning Broadway musical, but The Colony’s Grand
Hotel, The
Musical, as
reinvisioned by director Peter Schneider, will be unlike any other
version of
the show you know. This Grand Hotel will be sexy, vibrant, captivating
and
passionate---the way great musicals should be.
Set
in Berlin in 1928, the story of
Grand Hotel is a human tapestry of love, loss, lies, and longing. The
action
takes place in the opulent Grand Hotel, the most elegant hotel in
Europe,
where, as they say, "people come…people go…And nothing ever happens."
Well, that's not exactly true. What happens in the lobby, rooms, and
hallways
is life---in all its grandeur, tragedy, joy and sorrow. Characters of
every
kind come to this hotel: a Baron desperately trying to hold onto his
place in
society, an aging ballerina desperately trying to hold onto her youth,
an
ambitious typist desperately trying to make something more of her life,
and a
dying accountant desperately trying to live out his last days among the
rich
and
Musical Director Michael Reno
rehearses with cast members Jason Graae,
Robert J. Townsend, Chris Payne DuprJ, and Mike Irizarry
beautiful. The fantasy world of
the Berlin hotel, one of the final
bastions
of the idle rich, set against the stark reality of a fragile post-war
economy,
is a reminder of the dichotomies of life and the complexities of
humanity. The
hotel's grand revolving door serves as more than just a metaphor for
the
colorful guests who come and go in this complex and captivating story.
The
themes that resonate throughout
the story are universal--hope, pride, lust, envy--basically each of the
seven
deadly sins has its moment in this beautiful and haunting tale.
Whether
it’s money, love or fame, we all
crave something. Grand Hotel is the place those cravings are met---and
where
dreams are both made and dashed.
Grand
Hotel has a long and colorful
history. Based on Austrian author Vicki Baum's 1929 novel, "Menschen im
Hotel" ("People in a 
Cynthia Becket rehearses
a musical numberHotel"),
the original stage version,
dramatized by Baum, appeared the following year in Berlin before moving
to New
York, featuring a 52-member cast. In 1932 MGM released the Academy
Award-winning film Grand Hotel, starring Greta Garbo and Lionel
Barrymore (in
which Garbo uttered her famous line "I want to be alone"), and, in
1958, the first musical version titled At the Grand, starring Paul
Muni, was
produced in California, although it never found its way to Broadway
after Muni
abandoned the project. The story also served as the premise for the
ill-fated
TV series Hotel starring James Brolin, before finally finding success
on
Broadway in 1989, where it captured 5 Tony Awards, including Best
Featured
Actor in a Musical for Michael Jeter, and Best Director and
Choreographer for
Tommy Tune.
The
authors of Grand Hotel have
colorful histories of their own. For over seventy years Robert Wright
and
George Forrest (Music and Lyrics) were partners, collaborating on music
and
lyrics for film, stage and club acts. They specialized in adapting
themes from
classical music into engaging tunes for movie scores and stage
musicals. They
were nominated for three Academy Awards but are perhaps best-known for
their
score of Kismet (book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis), which was
based on
the music of Alexander Borodin and won a Tony Award in 1953. The most
popular
song from the show, "Stranger in Paradise," has been recorded by many
artists, perhaps most notably Johnny Mathis.
Author
Luther Davis, who wrote the
book for Grand Hotel, got the inspiration for the musical when he came
across
the out-of-print novel in a second-hand bookstore. Maury Yeston, an
accomplished composer in his own right, was brought in to contribute a
few
songs for the show. Yeston is perhaps best-known for creating the
Tony-Award
winning scores for Titanic and Nine.
Directing
Grand Hotel will be
Peter
Schneider, a creative
mastermind with an impressive resume. Best-known
for his
long tenure at Walt Disney, Peter oversaw the rebirth of the animation
industry
Cate Caplin and Gary Franco rehearsing
and was responsible for getting over 20 movies made, including Who
Framed Roger
Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Toy Story. He
also
served as
the President of Disney Theatricals, where he produced Aida and The
Lion King
on Broadway. What most people don't know is that Peter started his
professional
career in the theatre and was very active in the off-off Broadway
movement in
the early seventies, directing at Circle Repertory Theater, the WPA
Theater,
and Playwrights Horizons. For 5 years,
he was the Managing Director of the St. Nicholas Theater, one of the
premiere
Director Peter Schneider, Choreographer Cate Caplin
and Property Designer M.E. MacElveney
watch a rehearsal
theatres in America for developing new writers, and he was the
Associate
Director of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, a 10 week Arts festival
that
changed the face of the Arts in Los Angeles.
Peter
has assembled an outstanding
production team, including Musical Director
Michael Reno, Choreographer
Cate
Caplin, and an ensemble of
actors who will knock your socks off with
their
singing, dancing and acting talents. Included in the 20-member cast is
company
member Dink
O'Neal, whom you will
remember as Bruce Granit in On The
Twentieth
Century, and
Beth Malone, who played Sally
in our production of You're
A Good
Man, Charlie Brown. Also featured in the cast is Jason
Graae, whose
credits
include Falsettos on Broadway, the original cast of Forever Plaid, and
Ragtime,
where he created the role of Harry Houdini. As if the promise of
amazing vocals
isn’t enough, Grand Hotel will feature dancing---and lots of it! One
thing is
for sure, this show will be a spectacle of proportions you haven't seen
on our
stage in a long time. Make sure you don’t miss out on the show that
will be the
musical event of the year!
Grand
Hotel, the Musical will
begin
previewing on Wednesday, October 13, will open on Saturday, October 16,
and
will run through November 14. Grand Hotel, the Musical will be
presented
without intermission and will run approximately 90 minutes. It is
appropriate
for ages 12 and up. To order tickets, call (818) 558-7000 today!
Artwork
and artwork title copyright
2004 Shoolery Design, Inc.
Bouquets to The Ladies
Our recent production of Lillian
Groag’s The
Ladies of the Camellias
continued our string of
through-the-roof
reviews, taking our current run of Los Angeles Times Critic’s Choices
to four
in a row, following the stunning critical success of Clutter,
The True
Story of
the Collyer Brothers Who Never Threw Anything Out, The Drawer Boy,
and
Around
the World in 80 Days. It just
goes to show, when you’re hot, you’re hot!
What
the critics had to say:
KABC Radio:
“As
George
Bernard Shaw famously
wrote in The Saturday Review, ‘Bernhardt is a star; Duse is an
actress.’...Be
that as it may, that historical dramatic duel is brought to new life in
a
hysterical sendup: The Ladies of the Camellias, written and directed by
Melinda Peterson and Victoria Carroll
as Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt
Lillian
Groag at Burbank's delightful Colony Theatre.... While Groag has used
memoirs
and diaries to authenticate the voices of the two women, the play
itself is a
fabrication, a hilarious slapstick farce played over-the-top by a team
of
well-directed, flawless performers...and the audience was with them
every step
of the way.... the play is intelligently written and lovingly
directed.”
Curtainup:
“Her
able cast is anchored by
Melinda Peterson as a piercing Duse and Victoria Carroll as a
commanding
Bernhardt. Mark Bramhall makes a dapper distraught Dumas, Louis Lotorto
is a
feisty Worms, Marcelo Tubert is dashingly devastated as Flavio, Tony
Abatemarco’s M. Benoit is always so infused with energy that this
subsidiary
part becomes as important to us as it does to him....Special kudos to
A.
Jeffrey Schoenberg for his gorgeous costumes. Tom Buderwitz’s elegant
set opens
onto the brick prop-lined back wall of a theatre, underlining the
reality
behind this particular opiate. Jeremy Pivnick’s lighting design is used
to
highlight the actresses’s key moments as surely as if they’d done it
themselves.”
Los
Angeles Times:
“Big
egos, great fun....Two great
ladies haunt the hilarity of The Ladies of the Camellias. Abundantly
entertaining, Lillian Groag's The Ladies of the Camellias, now at the
Colony,
is a gilt-edged valentine to the theater that begins as a frothy
exegesis of
eccentric celebrity and ends with a surprising philosophical punch.
Groag, who
has revised and rewritten Camellias for the Colony's production,
directs her
own work with just the right touch of slapstick, maximizing its
deliberate and
delightful artifice. In the best tradition of other theater-centric
comedies
such as Light Up the Sky, The Royal Family and Enter Laughing, Groag's
play
concentrates on the comical foibles of eccentric theater folk.
Inspired
by an actual meeting between Duse
and Bernhardt, Groag's play has the added advantage of being
well-researched
and scholarly, abounding with references to Shaw, Stanislavski and
Marx, and
rich with the kind of gossipy anecdotes dear to theater-lovers' hearts.
Groag's
sterling cast captures the genuine camaraderie of theater people--- an
exotic
tribe that fuels plenty of rollicking fun. But just when you think this
enterprise might devolve into mere camp, Groag alters the discourse
into an impassioned
defense of art and the civilizing properties of the theater.”
Back
Stage West:
“Few things are as much fun for theatricals as
watching theatricals being theatrical. CRITIC’S PICK!”
LA
Weekly:
“The
acting is flawless and Tom Buderwitz’s
set design is a marvel of riches from an age gone by. RECOMMENDED!”
The Colony Welcomes New
Managing
Director
Following
the departure of
long-time Managing Director Amanda Diamond, The Colony was left with
some
pretty big shoes to fill. Artistic Director Barbara Beckley knew that
whomever
she brought in would have to not only have the qualifications to handle
the
 challenging duties
of Managing Director for a fast-rising Equity
theatre, but
also a person who could fit into the Colony family. The right candidate
would
also need to understand that despite our recent critical successes,
challenges
are still ever-present in this economic climate, as funding for the
arts is in
perpetual decline. Even a theatre as successful as The Colony struggles
to make
ends meet, and the search for new sources of revenue is constant. The
role of a
Managing Director is to not only help to seek out these new sources of
revenue,
but to assist the Artistic Director in steering the organization
through storms
and into calmer waters.
Instead
of looking at the search
for a new Managing Director as an overwhelming task, Barbara decided to
use the
search as an opportunity to forge a new path for the theatre. As The
Colony
nears its 30th anniversary, she wanted to find a creative partner,
someone with
a vision for the future of the Colony, who could assist her in guiding
the
theatre through the current economic climate, who has a background and
a
general knowledge of theatre, and has fresh ideas for where The Colony
should
be in two, five, ten and thirty years from now.
She
found this compatriot in Sean
Alan Cutler, a young theatre professional from Florida who had made his
recent
mark in New York in the commercial theatre world. Sean worked
extensively
off-Broadway, where he served as a member of the management team of
Blue Man
Group’s New York City production of Tubes, as the Company Manager and
Acting
General Manager of American Rhapsody: Songs of the Gershwins, and, most
recently, as the Associate General Manager of the long-running hit, The
Donkey
Show and its sister production, The Karaoke Show.
Even
though Sean had spent the past
15 years in New York, he began his career as an actor in his hometown
of Miami
at age 8. At 15, he was nominated for a Carbonell award for Best Actor
in a
Play for the role of Eugene in Brighton Beach Memoirs. A graduate of
The New
World School of the Arts in Miami, where he was a Dean’s Award
recipient, Sean
went on to earn degrees in Film and Television Production, as well as
Political
Science, from New York University.
To
call Sean a true Renaissance man
of the theatre would be an understatement. In addition to performing
and
management, Sean has been a crew member, stage manager, production
manager,
technical director, designer, writer, director, and usher.
While
the challenge of becoming the
Managing Director of a nationally-recognized, award-winning Equity
theatre like
The Colony is a daunting one for someone his age, Sean’s passion for
theatre
and his vision for the future make him the ideal candidate to help lead
us to
our next thirty year anniversary.
Beckley
feels she has found the
right partner in Sean, “It was very hard to lose Amanda, who had become
such an
integral part of the Colony family, but in Sean we’ve found another
young and
talented professional who has a wonderful passion for theatre. I feel
our
management styles will totally complement each other and I’m looking
forward to
working with Sean for many years to come!”
Welcome
to The Colony, Sean!
The Colony
Receives Six Ovation Award Nominations
At a press
conference held at The
Boston Court Theatre on September 15, the nominations for the 2004 LA
Stage
Alliance Ovation Awards were announced, and The Colony was honored with
six
nominations.
Spanning
shows that were produced
in the greater Los Angeles area from September 1, 2003 to August 31,
2004, the
Ovation Awards are Southern California’s only peer-judged theatre
awards. The
Colony won the coveted Ovation Award for Best Play in a Larger Theatre
the last
two years in a row, in 2002 for The Laramie Project, and in 2003 for
Toys in
the Attic.
Although
we are particularly proud
of each nominee, we are perhaps even prouder of the fact that of the
five
Colony productions that qualified for Ovation consideration this year,
four
were recognized with nominations. Our consistency was similarly honored
in
2002, when our productions of Side Show, The Laramie Project, and
You’re A Good
Man, Charlie Brown all garnered nominations.
Congratulations
to all of our 2004
Ovation nominees!
Set
Design in a Larger Theatre
- Tom
Buderwitz - The Ladies of the
Camellias
Costume
Design in a Larger Theatre
- A.
Jeffrey Schoenberg - The Ladies
of the Camellias
Lighting
Design in a Larger Theatre
Featured
Actor in a Musical
- Jeffrey
Rockwell - Gunmetal Blues
Featured
Actor in a Play
- Jeff
Marlow - Around the World in
80 Days
Featured
Actor in a Play
- Larry
Cedar - Around the World in
80 Days
The
Ovation Award ceremony will be
held on November 14 at the Orpheum Theatre.
Jeffrey Rockwell
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Larry Cedar
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Jeff Marlow
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Special Announcement
The
Colony’s Fine Wine Club Debuts
The
Colony is introducing its own
wine club, in partnership with Friar’s Choice, to provide exclusive
fine wines
to our supporters. For the holidays, personal enjoyment, or business
entertainment, these wines all score well, having great taste and the
best
value. These fine boutique Australian and New Zealand wines are making
their
American debut, and The Colony is getting the first opportunity in the
U.S. to
order these fine wines, sold in an exclusive mixed case.
Winter
2004 Limited Edition
Case
of 12 bottles, 3 bottles
each:
- 2002
Eldredge Cabernet Sauvignon
- 2004
Terrace Road Sauvignon Blanc
- 2003
Morgan’s Run Shiraz
- 2003
Pendarves Verdelho
A
generous donation is made to The
Colony by Friar’s Choice for every case sold.
Reserve
your order for a
pre-holiday delivery of a case today!
Price:
$150 plus 8.25% sales tax
and $10 delivery charge.
Reservations:
George C. Bacon, CEO,
Friar’s Choice, Tel: (661) 251-0866
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