Grey Gardens

By: Kevin Filipski

Sunday November 26, 2006

The Maysles brothers classic film has recently had a Criterion revamp, a Broadway musical, and an upcoming Hollywood adaptation.
It's Bealemania!

Edie and her mother Edith Beale have returned in a big way-not only has their appearance in the 1976 cult classic Grey Gardens given them iconic status, but they've also become even more ubiquitous now, with the near-simultaneous appearance of the musical Grey Gardens on Broadway and the new boxed set from Criterion Collection which packages the original movie by the Maysles Brothers with this year's sequel of sorts, The Beales of Grey Gardens.

The movie Grey Gardens is either the funniest or saddest movie ever made, depending on whether you look on the Beales as misunderstood, iconoclastic loners or simply a sadly instructive case of mental illness. It seems that Albert and David Maysles couldn't decide either, which is why, whenever watching Grey Gardens, I feel queasy while witnessing these two women among such physical and mental degradation.

Still, such a spectacle is difficult to ignore, and there is undeniable humanity in this strangely needful mother-daughter relationship. That's why The Beales of Grey Gardens - which was made from hours of footage never used in the first film - seems unnecessary, even redundant. The 90 minutes originally spent with the Beales in Grey Gardens were enough; this seems mere piling on.

Albert Maysles' video introduction to the new film implicitly acknowledges that fact: he mentions the renewed interest in the Beales through the musical and impending feature film version (starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore-yikes!) as reason enough to revisit the material.

It goes without saying that you already know whether or not Criterion's usual first-rate boxed set is for you.

The Broadway musical is another kettle of fish (or litter of cats) entirely. Originally presented off-Broadway in a smaller theater, Grey Gardens has been spruced up and fiddled with somewhat, but it emerges dramatically and musically intact.

Doug Wright's book is cleverly done, beginning with the Beales in the dilapidated old house in the Hamptons in 1973, then flashing back to 1941 for Act I to show how Edie was dominated-whether knowingly or subconsciously is never resolved-by her mother, to whom she soon returns home after moving for Manhattan after Edith destroys Edie's best chance at marriage...to a Kennedy!

By contrast, Act II strictly adheres to the movie, as the women find themselves increasingly cut off from the world-and reality.

Although there's been criticism of Act I as thoroughly ordinary, by Broadway musical standards, it's needed to do two things: to show what these women's relationship was like before they became infamous recluses, and to prevent Grey Gardens from becoming a campy freak show, which it would have become if, like the Maysles' movie, there was no psychological grounding of this bizarre bond.

With music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, the songs-merely functional throughout Act I-become, in Act II, quite witty commentary: the Act II opener, sung by former model Edie, "The Revolutionary Costume for Today," is a showstopper, and tunes like "The Cake I Had" and "Jerry Likes My Corn" are simultaneously funny and filled with melancholy.

Michael Greif-famous for his helming of Rent from small downtown show to worldwide smash hit-directs with panache, including such psychologically acute visuals as various Act I cast members return as ghostly presences in Act II. All of the actors are splendid, but the standouts-of course-are Christine Ebersole (Edith in Act I and Edie in Act II) and Mary Louise Wilson (Edith in Act II).

Both of these splendid actresses have big shoes to fill living up to the starry aura of the real Edie and Edith, especially considering the many "Grey Gardens" cultists who show up nightly at the Walter Kerr Theatre. But they come through triumphantly. Wilson catches the humor and horror of what Edith has become, always ready with a quip (many of which are from the original movie), but equally aware of the sadness built up over the years.

Ebersole, who plays both mother and daughter separated by three decades, is simply magnificent, even better than the kudos she's been receiving from critics: in Act I, she's the upwardly mobile social climber Edith, whose invisible husband and omnipresent daughter are her biggest handicaps, and in Act II, she's Edie, a failure at everything except as her mother's daughter.

These superlative actresses create life-affirming characters quite apart from the real Beales in the Maysles documentaries. Those monumental acting achievements elevate Grey Gardens, the musical, above Grey Gardens, the movie.