Sunday, October 04, 2009
A+E, Theater, Reviews
In the weeds
Cheery ‘Grey Gardens’ musical fails to take root
Chris Ozment
Wade Benson and Kathleen McManus
“GREY GARDENS”
Actor’s Express
404-607-7469
www.actors-express.com
Through Oct. 10
BY BERT OSBORNE
How far lower can we bow our heads for the state of musical theater? For years now, it seems there’s barely enough original material to fill four slots in a Tony category—and even that’s conceding that the mere addition of songs qualifies stuff like "Legally Blonde," "9 to 5" or countless Disney cartoons as original material.
Perhaps the question should be: Where are the original ideas? Then again, there’s a long history of classic plays adapted from books, of classic musicals adapted from plays, so what’s the difference? (Don’t look at me. I’m only asking.) It used to make sense and serve a purpose when stage hits, which had been seen by a comparative few, were rethought for a mass movie audience. Something about the reverse doesn’t hold as true—not so much a matter of spreading the word as cashing in on it. (Yeah, yeah, that’s why it’s called show business.)
This is one problem "Grey Gardens" (book by Doug Wright, songs by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie) doesn’t have. Because it isn’t based on a mainstream blockbuster with a pre-existing plot, but instead on an obscure 1976 documentary about the depraved lives of "Little Edie" and Edith Bouvier Beale, distanced relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, at least there’s the initial potential for originality in how the writers decide to tell the story.
Unfortunately, they opt for a rather conventional, cheery version of events. Admittedly, I saw the movie once, many years ago. But I distinctly recall how pathetic these women were, how possibly crazy and downright scary, living in squalor on their crumbling Long Island estate—a "veritable museum of perversity unfit for human habitation," as Wright’s script puts it. I definitely don’t remember them as lovable eccentrics who just bickered a lot.
Like Mister in the musicalized "Color Purple," the characters appear to have been toned down in the interest of crowd-pleasing entertainment. Act One is set in their 1941 heyday, lending itself to an excess of breezier tunes. Once things turn darker—Act Two is set in 1973—it’s too little, too late. For every slightly effective number (in one, the supporting cast lurks around the stage, meowing as cats that have overtaken the place), there are extraneous trifles about grits and cake and corn, even a marching-band routine led by Norman Vincent Peale.
Overly loud in style and sound alike, artistic director Freddie Ashley’s ambitious Actor’s Express production (with music direction by Clay Causey) isn’t fully served by Jill Hames in the leading role. A competent comedienne, she delivers a one-note performance that’s especially frustrating because she’s playing two characters (mother Edith in the first act, daughter Edie in the second). Aside from bearing absolutely no physical or behavioral connection to Sarah Turner (as the younger Edie in Act One), Hames never varies her approach to the two parts. Her "serious" solo at the end is not unmoving—but it develops out of nowhere.
The rest of the ensemble is negligible. In one of her finest hours, though, the seasoned Kathleen McManus single-handedly redeems the latter half of "Grey Gardens," taking over as the aging mother. If turning a scandal into a triumph is the very definition of character, as Edith attests, McManus is clearly up to the challenge. It’s a brave and unflattering portrait, in a show that’s otherwise satisfied simply painting it cute. SP