Theater review: Grey Gardens

by Christopher Soden

Who would guess you could construct an absorbing, poignant, quirky musical from the story of two old cat ladies sharing a decrepit mansion in the East Hamptons? Well, the answer is: Doug Wright, Scott Frankel, and Michael Korie, creators of Grey Gardens, a show (now playing at the WaterTower Theatre in Addison) inspired by the documentary of the same name.

Directed by the iconoclastic and notorious Maysles brothers (David & Albert) in the '70s, the film exposed a less than flattering side of mother and daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, and “Little Edie,” Edith Bouvier Beale. The Maysles, I think it’s safe to say, built a successful canon of documentaries based on the idea that the truly unique among us are rarely aware of how “different” they must seem to others. They had a gift for exploiting the eccentricities of their subjects without tipping their hand. When you consider the story of the two Edies, a fable of how women with character and aplomb are punished for merely rejecting the mindless status quo, their predicament stands as an indictment. And not against them.

A keynote of Grey Gardens is the Bouvier pedigree -- Elder Edie was the aunt of Jacquelyn Kennedy (nee’ Bouvier) and Little Edie, her cousin. Mother and daughter were from this wealthy clan, and both had a taste for the community of artists, including actors and musicians. Both would have continued to live comfortably were it not for their assertive and wayward dispositions. Mind you none of this qualified them as malcontents or pathological. Their cardinal sin was indiscretion, and perhaps an unspoken need to rely a little too heavily upon each other, adrift in an unwelcoming world of snobs and misogynists. A song called “Marry Well” in which Major Bouvier (Edith’s father) indoctrinates three of the Bouvier girls in the strategy of financial security, lays out the mores of America in the 1940s, when social order dictated behavior. Little Edie comes very close to marrying Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., but his devotion to a patriarchal code of ethics destroys their plans for future bliss.

When Grey Gardens returns to the crumbling mansion of the same name, it is 1973. Edith and Little Edie occupy a home much too large for them to maintain, scraping by on very little money, ignored by their family, sharing what they have with cats and raccoons. They receive constant complaints from the neighbors and warnings from the Health Department, but what can they do? They have been relegated to the netherworld of lunatics and misfits. They blame each other for their squalid lives, but still love one another and share joy in simple pleasures. “Entering Grey Gardens,” a beautifully twisted song, warns visitors of the hazards of mistaking cat food for pate, a wry commentary on lines blurred between impoverishment and privilege. The scavengers that find a home with the Bouviers take on several connotations: familiars, companions, pets, soulmates? In the beginning prologue, Edith explains she could happily just “run off and elope” with the cats. You’d think she’d had enough of tomcats.

The songs of Grey Gardens vary widely from the first act, where they hark back to the pop tunes and cultural edicts of the '40s, to the somber, prattling, introspective songs of act two, where we come to appreciate the murky aquarium the two Edies inhabit. In act one, we experience the upbeat music that describes society and its rituals. In act two, we get woodwinds and chattery lyrics that seem to embrace an uneasy (but satisfying) connection to the music. “The Revolutionary Costume for Today,” Little Edie’s song tying fashion choices to political manifesto, is glorious. We get all of the dizzy, breathless charm of Edie’s nutty, affable character. She loves to visit and believes in the value of challenging authority. When the Maysles came to film them, what seemed outré 30 years ago must have seemed perfectly normal in the '70s, even if they didn’t. Yet another chord from Grey Garden’s cluster of ironies.

In the first act, the teenaged Little Edie is played by Kimberly Whalen, and in the second by Diana Sheehan, who plays Elder Edie (her own mother) in act one. Did you follow that? If you missed the opportunity to catch Whalen in Theatre Three’s A Light in the Piazza, you wouldn’t see the striking contrast as she plays the headstrong, vibrant daughter here. Whalen is stirring and convincing as the worldly, intelligent, achingly frank, ingenue who like so many in an unenlightened culture, is hammered for refusing to play along. She’s ravishing and vulnerable and luminous.

Diana Sheehan, as the mother (and later, her daughter) is breathtaking in her mastery of this Herculean task. Granted both characters share many qualities. But Sheehan brings depth and complexity to both women, that we might easily have lost if she’d pawned them off as merely deluded or zany. So much of Grey Gardens is soaked in smoldering rage and disappointment in a culture that doesn’t always reward the brave and radiant. Sheehan (and certainly, director Terry Martin) grasps this so fully, it imbues her performance with a sardonic, melancholy resonance.

Pam Dougherty is well cast as the older mother Edith Bouvier Beale. Patient and easy-going, she parses her energy but you can still feel the panache. Matt Moore is impressive in his dual role as Kennedy and laid-back handyman Jerry, who comes by to do chores for the two recluses. Moore brings a fair amount of humanity to the ultimately unsympathetic role of the fiancé who can’t see past his own vanity, and the young man whose sense of charity motivates his visits to Grey Gardens. Gary Floyd brings great flair and dry humor to composer George Gould Strong, Elder Edie’s gay companion and accompanist.

Set Designer Christopher Pickart deserves special note for creating a truly eerie and evocative, dilapidated mansion, the central metaphor for Grey Gardens. In addition to numerous other scenes, all detailed and vivid, his depiction of Grey Gardens is stunning and quietly elegiac, as if it, too, were a character in this unique, profound narrative as well.

Christopher Soden is a Dallas-Fort Worth area theater critic who also writes for The Column.