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For Edies, With Love And Squalor
  
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‘Grey Gardens’ At The Suzanne Roberts Theatre
By JONATHAN L. FISCHER, The Bulletin
How do we account for this, the long, strange cultural half-life of “Grey Gardens?”
Both a foreshadowing of today’s fascination with celebrity and a compelling human drama, the 1976 film by the Maysles brothers has managed to endure far beyond the shelf-life of most documentaries. It is set almost entirely within the 28-room East Hamptons, N.Y., estate known as Grey Gardens, where for 50 years lived the reclusive Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once at the center of great society and privilege, the mother and daughter were living in squalor and near-poverty by the early 1970s. When the Maysles finally gave the women the spotlight they both sought in their youths, they repulsed audiences and seduced them just as quickly.
“Grey Gardens” has inspired cult followers, who recite its lines as though it were “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”; countless books and articles; a Twitter page that churns out weird aphorisms from the documentary’s outtakes; and most recently, an HBO movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.
And then there’s Grey Gardens the musical, which premiered off-Broadway in 2006, won three Tonys for its Broadway iteration in 2007, inspired revivals across the country, and now comes to Philadelphia, in a production by the Philadelphia Theatre Company that opens next week at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre.
“I think Grey Gardens is a great American story at heart,” said Sara Garoznik, the company’s artistic director. “What holds our fascination is these two women and their fall from grace. … and the almost unanswerable question: Why? Were they mentally ill, were they eccentric aristocracy, which is more in a British tradition, or were they just fragile? Or did they live in a hostile society?”
To watch the original documentary is to be pulled in by the destitution it records. But it’s the Beales who keep our attention.
“I think it’s sort of a horror story at first,” said Lisa Peterson, the musical’s director. “To try to understand these women who grew up rich and cultured and almost famous — how could they fall so far?
She continued: “But the women themselves are such interesting, complicated people, so the more you watch them the more you fall in love with them.”
Albert and David Maysles helped pioneer a verité style of documentary filmmaking involving highly portable cameras and an observational style (while still acknowledging their own presence). At several points in “Grey Gardens,” the Maysles converse with the Edies, but mostly they allow the women to tell their own story. Both dreamed of entertaining: Big Edie, or Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, was an aspiring singer and a well-known eccentric, whose husband, Phelan Beale, left her around the time she attended their son’s wedding dressed as an opera singer. Little Edie modeled, acted and danced as an amateur, and throughout the film claims she was on the verge of being “discovered” when, at age 35 in 1952, she returned to Grey Gardens to care for her ailing mother. In some of the film’s most memorable scenes, the Edies sing along to old 45s while bickering, reminiscing and sorting through their harried belongings. Big Edie died in 1977; Little Edie died in 2002.
“I think in another age, they would’ve moved to SoHo or some other place,” Ms. Garoznik said. Instead, she suggested, they were constrained by the mores of time — eras audiences will recognize from the stories of Salinger, Fitzgerald, Cheever and Yates.
The Edies were almost certainly mentally unbalanced, indicated as much by their dysfunctional yet codependent relationship as the filth they lived in. They shared Grey Gardens with at least a dozen cats, not to mention legions of rats, raccoons and fleas. Suffolk County officials nearly evicted the women in 1971; the “raid,” as Little Edie refers to it, became a national cause célèbre that ended with a financial rescue by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Each iteration of “Grey Gardens” has treated the Edies differently. The documentary was just that; while it horrifies, it neither judges the Edies nor seeks to explain them. The recent HBO film takes almost the opposite approach, using biography as an exploratory instrument.
Ms. Garoznik suggested that while the musical raises many questions about the Beales’ lifestyle, its concerns are really twofold: flushing out the dueling worlds of entertainment and privilege whence the Edies came; and hoping to understand their pathology.
While the musical mostly observes in a before-and-after fashion (Act 1 takes place in 1941, Act 2 in 1973), Ms. Garoznik said, “it makes a conjecture about the codependent relationship between mother and daughter. Edie’s dependency on her mother maybe crippled her and prevented her from moving on.” It’s no shock that, in one of the film’s sequences, Little Edie ponders a birdcage she keeps meaning to hang up.
As for its production, the Philadelphia Theatre Company thought hard about appropriate aesthetic and psychological strategies.
“We’re taking a totally different approach to this production,” Ms. Garoznik said. “We have a new physical take on it, and I think that liberates it from what people might’ve seen on Broadway or off-Broadway”
Ms. Peterson explained that “the set is basically a giant three-sided projection screen” — a reflection of both the physical setting and the psyche of Little Edie. Hollis Resnik plays the younger Edie, and Joy Franz plays the older.
“I would say it’s a big show,” said Ms. Peterson, even though it has only eight actors and six musicians. She said the small orchestra actually performs on stage, and is occasionally visible through one of the screens. “In Little Edie’s mind, she’s always accompanied,” she concluded with a laugh.
Perhaps that’s the central ingredient to Grey Gardens: that despite its unsavory setting and themes, it’s strangely joyous and individualistic. Along with the decay, squalor and faded dreams, there is glamour, wealth and showmanship.
All of which, of course, proves to be ephemeral.
“There’s that perverse part of us that loves to see the wealthy and the privileged brought down,” suggested Ms. Garoznik. “We worship them, we love their beauty and then we love to bring them down. It’s an American pastime. Only the British love it more than us.”
“It’s almost like a tragedy in a way, she said. “Like, a great way.”
Jonathan L. Fischer can be reached at jfischer@thebulletin.us
Both a foreshadowing of today’s fascination with celebrity and a compelling human drama, the 1976 film by the Maysles brothers has managed to endure far beyond the shelf-life of most documentaries. It is set almost entirely within the 28-room East Hamptons, N.Y., estate known as Grey Gardens, where for 50 years lived the reclusive Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once at the center of great society and privilege, the mother and daughter were living in squalor and near-poverty by the early 1970s. When the Maysles finally gave the women the spotlight they both sought in their youths, they repulsed audiences and seduced them just as quickly.
“Grey Gardens” has inspired cult followers, who recite its lines as though it were “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”; countless books and articles; a Twitter page that churns out weird aphorisms from the documentary’s outtakes; and most recently, an HBO movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.
And then there’s Grey Gardens the musical, which premiered off-Broadway in 2006, won three Tonys for its Broadway iteration in 2007, inspired revivals across the country, and now comes to Philadelphia, in a production by the Philadelphia Theatre Company that opens next week at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre.
“I think Grey Gardens is a great American story at heart,” said Sara Garoznik, the company’s artistic director. “What holds our fascination is these two women and their fall from grace. … and the almost unanswerable question: Why? Were they mentally ill, were they eccentric aristocracy, which is more in a British tradition, or were they just fragile? Or did they live in a hostile society?”
To watch the original documentary is to be pulled in by the destitution it records. But it’s the Beales who keep our attention.
“I think it’s sort of a horror story at first,” said Lisa Peterson, the musical’s director. “To try to understand these women who grew up rich and cultured and almost famous — how could they fall so far?
She continued: “But the women themselves are such interesting, complicated people, so the more you watch them the more you fall in love with them.”
Albert and David Maysles helped pioneer a verité style of documentary filmmaking involving highly portable cameras and an observational style (while still acknowledging their own presence). At several points in “Grey Gardens,” the Maysles converse with the Edies, but mostly they allow the women to tell their own story. Both dreamed of entertaining: Big Edie, or Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, was an aspiring singer and a well-known eccentric, whose husband, Phelan Beale, left her around the time she attended their son’s wedding dressed as an opera singer. Little Edie modeled, acted and danced as an amateur, and throughout the film claims she was on the verge of being “discovered” when, at age 35 in 1952, she returned to Grey Gardens to care for her ailing mother. In some of the film’s most memorable scenes, the Edies sing along to old 45s while bickering, reminiscing and sorting through their harried belongings. Big Edie died in 1977; Little Edie died in 2002.
“I think in another age, they would’ve moved to SoHo or some other place,” Ms. Garoznik said. Instead, she suggested, they were constrained by the mores of time — eras audiences will recognize from the stories of Salinger, Fitzgerald, Cheever and Yates.
The Edies were almost certainly mentally unbalanced, indicated as much by their dysfunctional yet codependent relationship as the filth they lived in. They shared Grey Gardens with at least a dozen cats, not to mention legions of rats, raccoons and fleas. Suffolk County officials nearly evicted the women in 1971; the “raid,” as Little Edie refers to it, became a national cause célèbre that ended with a financial rescue by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Each iteration of “Grey Gardens” has treated the Edies differently. The documentary was just that; while it horrifies, it neither judges the Edies nor seeks to explain them. The recent HBO film takes almost the opposite approach, using biography as an exploratory instrument.
Ms. Garoznik suggested that while the musical raises many questions about the Beales’ lifestyle, its concerns are really twofold: flushing out the dueling worlds of entertainment and privilege whence the Edies came; and hoping to understand their pathology.
While the musical mostly observes in a before-and-after fashion (Act 1 takes place in 1941, Act 2 in 1973), Ms. Garoznik said, “it makes a conjecture about the codependent relationship between mother and daughter. Edie’s dependency on her mother maybe crippled her and prevented her from moving on.” It’s no shock that, in one of the film’s sequences, Little Edie ponders a birdcage she keeps meaning to hang up.
As for its production, the Philadelphia Theatre Company thought hard about appropriate aesthetic and psychological strategies.
“We’re taking a totally different approach to this production,” Ms. Garoznik said. “We have a new physical take on it, and I think that liberates it from what people might’ve seen on Broadway or off-Broadway”
Ms. Peterson explained that “the set is basically a giant three-sided projection screen” — a reflection of both the physical setting and the psyche of Little Edie. Hollis Resnik plays the younger Edie, and Joy Franz plays the older.
“I would say it’s a big show,” said Ms. Peterson, even though it has only eight actors and six musicians. She said the small orchestra actually performs on stage, and is occasionally visible through one of the screens. “In Little Edie’s mind, she’s always accompanied,” she concluded with a laugh.
Perhaps that’s the central ingredient to Grey Gardens: that despite its unsavory setting and themes, it’s strangely joyous and individualistic. Along with the decay, squalor and faded dreams, there is glamour, wealth and showmanship.
All of which, of course, proves to be ephemeral.
“There’s that perverse part of us that loves to see the wealthy and the privileged brought down,” suggested Ms. Garoznik. “We worship them, we love their beauty and then we love to bring them down. It’s an American pastime. Only the British love it more than us.”
“It’s almost like a tragedy in a way, she said. “Like, a great way.”
Jonathan L. Fischer can be reached at jfischer@thebulletin.us
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