Review: Grey Gardens
Riches to Rags Tale at Unicorn Theatre
Behind the walls of Grey Gardens in the tony East Hamptons, there once lived a mother and her daughter, Big Edie and Little Edie Beale. Their lives, once grand and regal like their mansion, have devolved into lives of thwarted dreams and crippling emotional isolation.
The dilapidated and squalid conditions of their home––referred to as a “28-room litter box”––were showcased in the pages of both the National Enquirer and New York Magazine after inspections by the Suffolk County Health Department shone a spotlight on the decay in which they lived.
How could this happen to the cousins of former first lady, Jackie O? What went wrong?
Documentarians Albert and David Maysles were allowed access to the Beales, filming their everyday lives and editing the material into the 1975 documentary film that served as the debutante ball for the Beale’s introduction to the public at large and ended up giving Big Edie and Little Edie the fame for which they both hungered. Only midway into their decline were they rewarded with the spotlight they sought. If they could’ve only lived to see the impact their lives have made on pop culture—TV, movies, fashion, and a musical now on-stage at the Unicorn Theatre.
Grey Gardens at Unicorn Theatre
This 2007 Tony-nominated musical is based on the 1975 documentary about Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The show runs January 29th-February 28th. Tickets available at www.unicorntheatre.org or 816-531-PLAY.
This musical (book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie) is a Horatio Alger tale of rags-to-riches played in reverse and in reverence under the nimble direction of Nedra Dixon (in her directorial debut at the Unicorn). Dixon shepherds and choreographs the cast through an awkward Act 1 to a stunning and heartbreaking Act 2.
“It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present,” says Little Edie famously. And how. The role of Little Edie in Act 1, set in 1941, gives Lauren Braton the thankless task of providing the character’s exposition and portraying the tricky role of Little Edie in her early years before she becomes the Little Edie immortalized in the documentary as well as Act Two.
In this act, Little Edie becomes the unhinged victim of her own hopes and grand familial expectations. She receives a telegram from her father saying he won’t be returning. She is wooed by Joe Kennedy, who later breaks her heart after learning of how she earned the nickname ‘Body Beautiful Beale’ from Big Edie who says how this is just like Little Edie “to take a scandal and make it into a triumph.” The grandstanding competitiveness between the two women lays the groundwork for their desolate future in Act Two.
Here we see Little Edie as she begins her descent into the archetype for which she is destined––a broken woman, an actress without a stage.
Cathy Barnett
Act Two opens with Cathy Barnett (now as Little Edie in 1973) who enters in a headwrap made of a sweater and be-pinned with a brooch. In torn stockings and white shoes, she sings “The Revolutionary Costume for Today.” The audience applauds upon recognition. This is the Little Edie we know. And love.
The interplay between Big Edie and Little Edie here is the meat of the story. Little Edie laments that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too and Big Edie counters that you can—she has! The audience roots for Little Edie to leave (and she almost does) before sadly returning back to Grey Gardens.
Cathy Barnett soars in Act Two, most notably in her knockout impersonation of our unintentionally camp Little Edie, from her hunching poses to her proud, singular voice. We gain our greatest insights into her brokenness in the startling solos “Around the World” and finally in the tearful torch song “Another Winter in a Summer Town.” Hers is a bravura performance––this from an actress who has built a career playing brash comic characters. Her casting as Little Edie Beale was a risk as well as a well-earned revelation.
Kathleen Warfel
Kathleen Warfel plays Big Edie in her golden years. She is bossy, needy, and refreshingly vulnerable in her latter days. Warfel is a character actress from head-to-toe and Little Edie’s perfect, charming antagonist.
Robert Gibby Brand is flawless in his turns as both the patriarch, Major Bouvier and as God’s most positive thinker, Norman Vincent Peale, wielding revivalist positivity in the song “Choose to be Happy.” The irrepressibly dashing Brandon Sollenberger plays Little Edie’s love interest, Joe Kennedy. Sollenberger returns in Act 2 as Jerry, the bewigged handyman and “soulmate” of Big Edie with a penchant for the corn she cooks in a bedside crockpot. (The song “Jerry Likes My Corn” ensues —and it’s a hum-along hoot!) Keenan Manuel Ramos, who plays the Beale’s butlers Brooks, Jr. and Sr., delivers a subtle performance and his side-eyed reactions wonderfully upstage the offending stereotypes of the Act One toe-tapper “Hominy Grits.” Seth Golay plays Big Edie’s gay, drunk accompanist glibly. Little Edie’s cousins, Jaqueline and Lee Bouvier are played with appropriate snobbery by Mattie Faith Bell and Erin Lowe.
The set, designed by Gary Mosby, is a star in and of itself: intricate and comprehensive with its unique adaptability. The ways in which the set is twisted and turned inside and out from Laura Ashley-style cheerfulness to broken down walls wherein raccoons and 52 cats roam is a masterful metaphor for the tragic half-lives of the Beale women. Co-costume designers, Megan Turek and Jon Fulton Adams have taken both of their talents to wonderful new heights with clothes as regal and eccentric as the Beales.
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by the Actor Training Studio.
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