Grey Gardens - Original Broadway Cast Recording

Grey Gardens is the story of Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, aunt and sister of Jacqueline Kennedy and prominent East Hampton socialites in the 1930s and 1940s. But every ambition they nurtured miscarried. Like their 28-room mansion, Grey Gardens, the Beales went to rack and ruin by the 1970s, becoming recluses in a dirty, smelly habitat fit only for the 52 stray cats and a few rabid raccoons they adopted.

Mother Edith had unfulfilled operatic aspirations; daughter Edie, show-biz ones. Edith's marriage went bust, and Edie's betrothal ended on the day of the engagement party. That was when the groom, presidential aspirant and Roman Catholic Joseph Kennedy Jr., repulsed by Edith's husband not showing up (he sent a telegram heralding divorce) and Edie's bohemianism (earning her the sobriquet "Body Beautiful Beale") took French leave. In The New York Times, Charles Isherwood cited the musical version of the Beales' tale, based on a cult-favorite documentary by the Maysles brothers, as a prime example of America's current fascination with—even glorification of—failure.

The show had a successful off-Broadway run and, after several months' hiatus, another success on Broadway, where it continues to run in (to quote the Times) a "deepened and sharpened" version. Christine Ebersole, portraying Edith in Act One and the middle-aged Edie in Act Two, deservedly won almost every conceivable award and accolade (with the 2007 Tony competition still to come); portraying the older Edith in Act Two, Mary Louise Wilson came in for her share of acclaim.

The original off-Broadway cast album (henceforth GG I) has now been superseded by the revised Broadway cast album (GG II). The book by Doug Wright is represented by some snippets of interjected talk; the music by Scott Frankel and the lyrics by Michael Korie are there in full.

[IMG:R]As consensus has it, the songs on GG II represent an improvement, with which, in most respects, I agree. The new opening number, "The Girl Who Has Everything," as sung by Edith to Edie on an old recording, is playing, and is chimed—or croaked—in by old Edith and sourly commented on by 56-year-old Edie. It establishes far better than GG I the lost glory and present comedown; its reprise as the final number also makes for a more chilling ending.

The new "Goin' Places" more aptly sets up the golden visions of Edie and fiancé Joe as future tenants of the White House. Similarly "Marry Well," sung by crusty grandfather Major Bouvier to, and along with, granddaughter Edie and her two young cousins (the future Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill) serves better than the number it replaces in elaborating the family philosophy. On GG II we duly get also "The Telegram"—Papa Beale's kissoff—which didn't make the cut on GG I.

But discarded and uncompensated for is a delightful Noel Coward pastiche, "Body Beautiful Beale." Now the score of Grey Gardens strikes me as begotten by Stephen Sondheim on Coward, yet, to its credit, it never sounds like mere parody. In this song, however, it does come close. Moreover, dramatically, the revelation that Edie was known as Body Beautiful Beale should come later and register as a shock; logically, though, the song would be awkward there. Still, couldn't this little gem have been inserted as an appendix to GG II—whose duration of 69' 48" could have easily accommodated it?

Grey Gardens, the musical, should be seen by all both for its fine production values and its splendid ensemble acting. GGII has a new Lee Bouvier (the off-Broadway one shot up too quickly during the hiatus), and a new Edie in Erin Davie, who, onstage, looks more right for the part than off-Broadway's Sara Gettelfinger. But for recording purposes, there is no significant difference.

GG II was needed, of course, to record for the future the show's final form. It offers, aurally at least, the definitive dual performance by the marvelous Christine Ebersole, and updated versions of the other remarkable cast members, notably Mary Louise Wilson's older Edith and John McMartin's Major Bouvier, of whom coming ages should not be deprived.

The new CD then, with its excellent sound and amply illustrated booklet, is a necessary acquisition for any lover of musicals. But if you already have GG I, hang on to it. Not only for "Body Beautiful Beale," but also because revisions, so often unneeded, can also be genuine improvements.