‘Grand’ show on an intimate stage

When “Grand Hotel” makes news, it’s usually because of the director.

The talk was pretty much all about Tommy Tune when the musical emerged in 1989 as a credible challenger to the British blockbusters then dominating the American stage and went on to accumulate five Tony Awards -- two of them for Tune’s work as director and choreographer -- and a respectably long run.

As the show returns in a production at Burbank’s Colony Theatre, the talk is again about the director: Peter Schneider, a former Hollywood golden boy who as a top Disney executive propelled such wildly successful animated films as “The Little Mermaid” and “The Lion King” and helped put Disney on Broadway with such musicals as “The Lion King.”

Schneider’s return to humbler enterprises has, of course, generated a lot of buzz. Yet while his work here is plenty slick, it is also graciously unobtrusive. By subtly streamlining the story and gently coaxing forth its emotions, Schneider has uncovered riches heretofore unsuspected in this transparent story and only intermittently infectious music.

Set in 1928 Berlin, the action takes place in a luxury hotel, which we are quickly made to realize is a microcosm of the world at large. Watching the flow of humanity through the busy lobby, a jaded colonel-doctor (Michael McCarty) observes: “People come. People go. Look at them -- living the high life! But time is running out.”

Schneider, like Tune, takes a minimalist approach to the staging, presented without intermission.

Set designer David Potts provides a backdrop of opulence: a two-story expanse of marble, mirrors and gilt. Specific settings, however, are suggested with just a few furnishings, as when, in a wonderful bit of visual wordplay, a ballet barre stands in for the hotel bar.

Also like Tune’s staging, Schneider’s whirls along gracefully as the characters get caught up in the larger dance of life.

Some sub-stories of the 1989 version have been winnowed or eliminated entirely. Gone, for instance, are the silverware-rattling scullery workers who speak for the world’s have-nots.

Everyday folk don’t go unrepresented, however, because Schneider has focused special attention on two working-class characters.

One is a dying bookkeeper (Jason Graae) who brings his life savings to the hotel so he can see how the other half lives, while trying to recapture something. “Life!” he exclaims. “Don’t you see? It went by while I wasn’t looking. I quite entirely missed it!”

Managing to be both wide-eyed and glum, Graae suffuses the character with giddiness and sweetness that endear him to one and all.

Among these is another working-class character: an attractive young typist (Beth Malone) who dreams of escaping to America and a career in movies. Malone lends the character a pixieish charm, her legs forever flapping to the exuberant beat of the Charleston.

In roughly the same economic category is a baron (Robert J. Townsend) so destitute that his only currency is his charm.

Vocally, these three are the show’s powerhouses. They generate an electricity that Cynthia Beckert, for all her physical elegance, can’t match in her prominent role as a fading ballerina -- and this causes periodic dips in the show’s energy level.

Not to worry, though.

The six-player band, led by Jeff Rizzo, is always ready to get things crackling again, as are centerpiece dancers Cate Caplin (also the show’s choreographer) and Gary Franco, who tango through the story, treating each other as human yo-yos.

*

‘Grand Hotel’

Where: Colony Theatre, in Media Center at 555 N. 3rd St., Burbank

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Also 3 p.m. this Saturday and Oct. 30, 8 p.m. Nov. 4 and 11.

Ends: Nov. 14

Price: $30 to $40

Contact: (818) 558-7000

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes