‘Grand Hotel’ a Deft Musical Homecoming : Tommy Tune shapes an almost seamless panorama for a trim two hours at the Pantages Theatre.

“I want to go to Hollywood,” an ambitious typist sings in the musical “Grand Hotel.”

Well, she made it. “Grand Hotel” is open for business at the Pantages Theatre, on Hollywood Boulevard.

It’s a homecoming of sorts. This show’s precursor, “At the Grand,” was a 1958 offering of Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, and this edition opens a new season for the same organization. The earlier version’s Luther Davis book and selections from its score, by Robert Wright and George Forrest, were retained in this year’s model.

The touring “Hotel” stopped at Orange County Performing Arts Center for a week in April. Since then, the only notable change has been the replacement of Anthony Franciosa by John Wylie as Colonel Doctor Otternschlag, a hot-air dispenser who watches the comings and goings in the Grand Hotel lobby, in 1928 Berlin, and comments on them with heavy-handed world-weariness.

Wylie won’t be here for long, however. After two weeks, Edmund Lyndeck will step in, and Wylie will return to the role on Broadway, where he created it.

The Colonel Doctor is hardly the show’s most important character--and gets my vote as its most irritating. It’s easy to imagine that an actor would not want to linger in the role for long; snarling his trite and pompous lines night after night could become very taxing.

When the Colonel Doctor talks, “Grand Hotel” sounds more like “Grandiose Hotel.”

Yet it is ultimately spared that fate. Tommy Tune saw to it.

The director/choreographer took Vicki Baum’s novel and the earlier show’s book and whipped them into an almost seamless, intermissionless panorama that clocks in at a trim two hours.

Half a dozen stories swirl around the stage, sometimes intertwining or claiming our attention simultaneously. Yet there isn’t a moment’s confusion about what’s going on. The only element that seems completely, foolishly facile is the show’s token nod to the proletariat, in the form of a quartet of scullery workers.

Other than that, the storytelling is shrewdly streamlined. Too bad the stories themselves are so hackneyed.

Briefly: an aging ballerina (Liliane Montevecchi), who is secretly loved by her longtime companion (Debbie de Coudreaux), falls instead for a kind-hearted jewel thief (Brent Barrett). But he’s already flirting with the above-mentioned typist/flapper (DeLee Lively), who tries to resist the advances of her slimy boss (K. C. Wilson), even as she assists in the jewel thief’s campaign to help a dying bookkeeper (Mark Baker) enjoy his last few weeks. Meanwhile, a bellhop (Dirk Lumbard) can’t get time off to help his pregnant wife, partially because he’s being seduced by his slimy boss (Martin van Treuren).

It’s the stuff of which TV miniseries are made. But it would be drawn out ad nauseam in a miniseries, and the hokum would seem overwhelming. Here, it has been boiled down to essences. And because the score (with Maury Yeston supplementing the earlier show’s Wright and Forrest songs) sounds pedestrian, and the dialogue creaks, most of the credit must go to Tune’s masterful sense of movement.

And to Tony Walton’s set. It was surely tempting to create grand scenery for “Grand Hotel,” but Walton resisted the impulse and, essentially, cleared the stage to make room for Tune’s handiwork. Not that the stage is bare; there is a skeletal structure of transparent columns and a scattering of highly mobile chairs. But no big set changes are necessary. And Jules Fisher’s lighting and Santo Loquasto’s costumes provide the luxury that’s lacking in the set.

Most of the performances are too sketchy to matter all that much, but Montevecchi’s grace and disarming humor are terrific, even for those of us who didn’t think much of her Tony-winning stint in Tune’s “Nine.”

It’s also fun to see Baker’s bookkeeper let loose in the famous “We’ll Take a Glass Together” and to watch Lively (!) “shake a wicked leg.” Finally, take a gander at the concluding dance between “Love” (Victoria Regan) and “Death” (Arte Phillips)--it’s silly but sensational at the same time, much like “Grand Hotel” itself.

‘Grand Hotel’

Doug Nagy: Doorman

John Wylie: Colonel Doctor Otternschlag

Victoria Regan and Arte Phillips: The Countess and the Gigolo

Martin Van Treuren: Rohna, the Grand Concierge

Dirk Lumbard: Erik, Front Desk

Nathan Gibson, David Andrew White: The Jimmys

David Dollase: The Chauffeur

Erick Devine: Zinnowitz, the Lawyer

David Rogers: Sandor, the Impresario

Bernie Passeltiner: Victor Witt, Company Manager

K. C. Wilson: General Director Preysing

DeLee Lively: Flaemmchen, the Typist

Mark Baker: Otto Kringelein, the Bookkeeper

Brent Barrett: Felix Von Gaigern, the Baron

Debbie de Coudreaux: Raffaela, the Confidante

Liliane Montevecchi: Elizaveta Grushinskaya, the Ballerina

Producers Concert Productions International, James M. Nederlander, Pace Theatrical Group. Book by Luther Davis, based on Vicki Baum’s novel. Songs by Robert Wright and George Forrest. Additional music and lyrics Maury Yeston. Director/choreographer Tommy Tune. Sets Tony Walton. Lights Jules Fisher. Costumes Santo Loquasto. Hair Werner Sherer. Sound Otts Munderloh. Music coordinator John Monaco. Orchestrations Peter Matz. Vocal arrangements Jack Lee. Music supervision Wally Harper. Musical director Ben Whiteley. Production stage manager Mark S. Krause.