Sunday Showtunes

A GREY DAY

This same night I saw “Grey Gardens,” the new musical based on the 1975 documentary about Jackie Kennedy’s aunt (Edith Bouvier Beale) and niece (“Little Edie” Bouvier) and how they wound up living in squalor near the end of their lives.  It’s really a study in co-dependency, the meaning of family, and hope in decline.  I loved the pre-show announcement, which featured a medley of recorded ring tones, followed by this speech:  “No matter how tuneful your cell phone ring is, please turn them off. This is a musical – we already have songs!”

The play is based on both fact and fiction.  In Act I, Chistine Ebersole plays the mother (Edith) in 1941 (as a young woman).  Erin Davie plays little Edie as a teenager.  Act I seems to be a creation by the authors because none of this material is in the documentary (the documentary was about the women in 1974, though for some reason the show places them in 1973).  The dialogue and plot seem to be speculative extrapolations made by the authors based on stuff the characters said in the documentary.  In Act II, Ebersole plays little Edie in 1973 (who is now 56 years old) while Mary Louise Wilson plays mother Edith as an elderly woman.   Almost all the dialogue in Act II is from the documentary and it is this act that is the most amazing, because Ebersole and Wilson imitate and capture these women EXACTLY down to each vocal inflection and gesture – aided by recreations of the wigs, makeup, and  loopy costumes of the actual women as seen in the film.  They both give astonishing performances that seem to bring the documentary to Broadway life before our very eyes.   The show is very good for what it is – a small, wrenching dramatic musical, not a feel-good giant blockbuster like Mary Poppins, Drowsy Chaperone, etc – but it is the performances (mostly these two) that really seal it as a quality production.   I won’t be a bit surprised if Ebersole wins a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical.  (At the end of Act I, the man next to me said to his friend, “It’s not a light and summery musical, is it?” to which his friend replied “No, it’s heavy-duty.”  I learned that this man’s wife just died 6 months ago and he was on a Broadway-and-cruise-vacation  - just like I did last year – to try to get over the pain.  That was heavy duty too!)

“Grey Gardens” is in a small house (900 seats?) which is a good venue for a small show like this.  (It transferred from Off-Broadway).  I saw the documentary for research before I left, and I hated it – I thought it was boring and didn’t explain anything about these women.  Act I of this show attempts to do that (it must be the fiction part though, as I said before) because you see (?) what the relationship was in the 1940’s that led to the dysfunctional relationship we saw in the older women in the documentary.   So unlike the documentary, Act II actually makes sense and of course with the addition of songs it’s entertaining in its own right. 

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.