The Fountain Hills Theater opened April 21-May 7 with “Grand Hotel.” It is 1928, “…midway between the World Wars, the height of the stock market boom, when Berlin was regarded as one of the world’s great centers of high life.”

People are staying at the most expensive hotel in Berlin, even though most of them can’t afford it. Love, death, life, dreams all converge at a single point in time: Berlin, Germany 1928.

The cast is superb, but Roger Prenger as Otto Kringelein steals the show, as he usually does. Although, I must say Matt McDonald with an eye patch is quite a sight to behold.

As the teaser goes, “Come spend a night or two in the world’s most opulent, extravagant hotel. Perhaps you will find your fortune there, perhaps you will find true love, perhaps all of your dreams will come true. Perhaps…”

Many of the elite whirl through the revolving doors; Elizaveta Grushinsksaya, the aging Russian ballerina; Felix von Gaigern, the impoverished, romantic German nobleman; a Jewish bookkeeper dying of cancer and blowing his life savings on a few days of high living; and Flammchen, the pregnant typist who is desperate to make it to Hollywood.

The set is amazing, courtesy of Peter J. Hill, who also directed.

See you at the theater!