Grey Gardens is the sad, strange tale of Jackie Kennedy's aunt, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, and cousin, Edith Bouvier Beale, and the filthy, cat ridden mansion in which they ended up as recluses. Those two deceased women, the mother, Big Edie,died in 1979 the daughter, Little Edie, in 2001, were very hot in 2006 when Michael Greif directed, Grey Gardens, the musical. Books had already been written about them and an important documentary had already been made.
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 having read 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 Learner 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 sould 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 the daughter, Edie, finally resigns herself to her fate, trapped in that house with her mother until her mother is dead. It's an aching lament, "Another Winter in a Summer Town."(The mansion is on Long Island.) Another song, "The Cake I Had," which the mother, 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, Jr. 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 as Big Edie and Christine Ebersole as Little Edie. 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' legs 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. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment