Grey Gardens - Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording
Now Available
The drama thrives on rises and falls, especially when they come in succession. In the musical Grey Gardens we get both—in duplicate, no less. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little" Edie Beale were prominent New York socialites hobnobbing with the greats, aunt and niece respectively of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but turned into reclusive derelicts.
Grey Gardens was their glorious East Hampton estate, which eventually deteriorated into a dirty, dilapidated 28-room mansion housing 52 stray cats, some rabid raccoons, and two ostracized women. The off-Broadway musical was based on a sensational 1975 film documentary by the Maysles Brothers, and has a book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie. Justifiably selling out its limited run, it is to reopen on Broadway this fall with the same cast. Meanwhile there is this excellent original cast CD, just released by PS Classics.
The creators smartly divided the show into two antithetical acts, a before in 1941 and an after in 1973. They took some necessary liberties while remaining true to the essence. Thus they compressed into Act One a proposed garden party for daughter Edie's engagement to Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr. (of the Kennedys), where mother Edith planned to sing way too many songs for Edie's taste, one of them even somewhat risqué.
Edie, known as Body Beautiful Beale, had a bit of a past and show-biz aspirations that did not jibe with Joe's political career (noted in the duet "Better Fall Out of Love"), ending in his breaking off the engagement. Edith' Wall Street lawyer husband sent a wire from Mexico announcing his divorce; her starchy, sardonic father, Major Bouvier, did show up to cast a baleful eye ("Being Bouvier"). Cute but getting underfoot are Edie's little nieces, Jackie and Lee. Edith will sing the songs she rehearsed with her sassy pianist, Gould, but to whom, as Edie runs off to New York City and the party is a shambles?
The songs in Act One are mostly highly effective pastiche, a genre that has acquired an undeservedly bad reputation. Sure, it is nostalgic, but if it is so not indiscriminately for the past but for things genuinely good about it, and isn't maudlin, why not? And yes, it is a kind of imitation, but if it is freely and imaginatively done, more power to it. Is Sondheim's Follies less wonderful for being largely pastiche?
In Act Two, the songs are less pastiche, though "Peas in a Pod," sung by Edith and Edie about their similarities regardless of circumstances, gets effectively reprised. Some of the performers also return: the delightful John McMartin, who was Major Beale is now Norman Vincent Peale, whose feelgood radio broadcasts ("Choose to Be Happy") Edith dotes on;[IMG:L] the apt Matt Cavenaugh, who was Joe Kennedy, is now a young slacker, Jerry, who sometimes helps out in the disintegrating house, and whom both women play up to, as in bedridden Edith's "Jerry Likes My Corn," boiled on a bedside hotplate.
Mary Louise Wilson is drolly exasperating as the crotchety, demanding old Edith, Sara Gettelfinger does well by Edie in 1941, Bob Stillman is fine as Gould (a drunk who ended up in the poorhouse), and Sarah Hyland and Audrey Twitchell are adorable as Jackie and Lee.
But the great dual performance is that of Christine Ebersole as Edith in Act One and Edie at 56 in Act Two. She is equally good at glamour and desperation, can make absurdity both very amusing and extremely touching. She even looks and behaves astoundingly like the middle-aged Edie pushing her ludicrous fashion notions ("The Revolutionary Costume for Today"), and can act a song as perfectly as she sings it. You root for her attempted escapes at the end of each act, and feel for her bittersweet final resignation.
Laudably, the CD booklet contains an informative interview with the creators, an adroit synopsis and some well-chosen production photographs.