The challenge facing Doug Wright was obvious from the start: how to make a skimpy storyline work. In the documentary Grey Gardens (shot in the 70s by the Maysles brothers and others), the camera stayed on real-life Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Little Edie as they tottered around their crumbling, cat-filled family mansion in East Hampton, bickering and bantering the whole time. The unfolding of their weird, tragicomic relationship — plus the visual evidence of their impoverished existence — a provided enough drama for a documentary. But those skimpy elements needed to be fleshed out to make a three-hour Broadway musical. Wright did it by creating a first act that’s all back-story. The setting is the same: Grey Gardens (in its heyday). But the time is 1941, when Edith was a promising young actress and the high-society girlfriend of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr (Josh Young). Played here by Rachel York, Edith is a high-spirited gal whose hopes for a showbiz career are crushed by her rich, pompous father (Simon Jones) and by the onset of WW II. The action in Act One is busy but a bit boring and predictable, despite some catchy songs like “Goin’ Places” and “Marry Well.” Grey Gardens kicks into a higher gear in Act Two, when Betty Buckley (as the now-aged Edith) joins Rachel (Little Edie) York on stage. These two troupers have a ball up there, trading insults and wisecracks, belting out songs, carrying on outrageously in the face of poverty and neglect. They are so poor that Little Edie has been unable to flee the coop and live on her own. Being trapped in Grey Gardens with her manipulative, vituperative mother has done Little Edie great harm, but she occasionally kicks up her heels and threatens to bust out and join the big world out there. Their sad symbiotic relationship gives Grey Gardens its strength and power. And humor, because these two grotesque characters can also be funny at times. Josh Young, who returns in Act Two as the delivery-boy Jerry, also has some good comic moments; ditto Simon Jones, who satirizes Norman Vincent Peale in a song called “Choose to Be Happy.” Grey Gardens is something of a cult musical; it was first done on Broadway ten years ago, and though it won Tonys for Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson, it never caught on in a large way with the public. This slick, lively, well-staged production just may turn things around for the musical.
