I liked Grey Gardens," and I liked it a lot. I wasn't bowled over by it, astonished by it, but I liked it very much. I agreed with the critics and a lot of ordinary folk that the second act is far more compelling than the first act, but I liked the first act, too, and better than I thought I would after reading reviews from both of the above.
The musical has every thing a very good musical, and certainly a great musical, should. The music is very good. It's not Lerner and Lowe good, not Rogers and Hammerstein good, not Kander and Ebb good, and certainly not Sondheim good, but very good. Each song does what it should do, some in spades. They entertain and provide comic relief when they should, they further develop the characters, shed further light on their relationships, and further move the plot along. The best song, in my opinion, comes at the end of the show when Little Edie finally resigns herself to her fate. It's the aching lament of missed opportunity, "Another Winter in a Summer Town." Just as poignant is the song," Around the World," Little Edie's sad rumination about how she's felt like a bird in a cage all her life in Grey Gardens when all she really wanted to do was to fly "around the world." The best book song in the show opens the second act. In a tour de force performance, Christine Ebersole shines in "The Revolutionary Costume," a song that captures both the Zeitgeist and the impoverished predicament that forces Little Edie to improvise to maintain a sense of fashion style. Another song, "The Cake I Had," which the Big Edie, Mary Louise Wilson, sings, reminded me of the two most Brechtian songs in Cabaret, both sung in the revival also by Mary Louise Wilson, then as Fraulein Schneider, "So What?" and "What Would You Do?"
The direction is crisp, and things keep moving at the steady pace they should. Your attention is always focused on what's happening on that stage. Somebody said the characters didn't seem to come to life until the second act. While it's true that they are far more interesting as eccentric recluses caught up in a sadly pathetic relationship characterized by anger, bitterness, and regret all mixed up with love, I don't agree that the characters weren't alive in the first act. I liked the way they are introduced in the first act, which, if anything, is not slow at all, but much more frenetic than the second. After all, it does take place as the family and servants are getting ready for a big event, the announcement of their daughter's engagement to Joe Kennedy. The director does a nice job introducing and juggling all the plates he has to, a big household full of ten different characters, including a ten year old Jackie Bouvier, who's come over to play with Lee, a young, and very good looking, Joe Kennedy, Jr., and the grandfather, "Major" Bouvier, played with panache and flair by John McMartin. Like most of the other characters, he has his own song, "Marry Well," and he's marvelous.
As a matter of fact, the whole cast is marvelous, beginning with Mary Louise Wilson and Christine Ebersole. Some of the characters morph into new ones in the second act. Especially good here is the young Joe Kennedy, Matt Cavenaugh, who in the second act, which takes place in 1972, has morphed into a long haired hippie who befriends Edith Bouvier Beale.
The staging is very good. I was wondering how the cats would be handled. They are handled by projections, and they work. So does the transformation of the home, from the gorgeous mansion it once was to the dilapidated and filthy place it became. I especially liked one touch in the masterfully designed living room of the mansion in its prime, one tiny example of that baroque 3-D effect where cherubs' leg or flowers jut out from the painting on the surface of the wall.
Two windows are smartly used. They descend and ascend framing the facade of the house both before and after. Somehow they managed to look pristine in the first act and old and dilapidated in the second act. They are more than just examples of good set design. The first and last image you see of the characters is through the windows. Through them, you catch your first glimpse of the world you're about to enter.
Last but far from least, the book is excellent. You don't expect War and Peace from any book of a musical. Not even "Gypsy" gives you that! But it is excellent. It's every bit as good as the songs in the exposition of the characters and their relationships. In both acts, the dialog is very funny. I wish I could remember it all, but it would be worth reading, as a play. I think much of the dialog is laugh out loud funny and would be so even on the page, uninterpreted by terrific actors who know how to deliver a line.
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