Grey Gardens Reviews- Page 3

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 11/2/06 at 11:31pm

I thought you might be gay. Doesn't mean you don't dislike yourself.

[wickedfan]

Posted: 11/2/06 at 11:49pm

Where is Clive Barnes' review?

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 11/2/06 at 11:52pm

These reviews mean great box office business. I am so pleased for the GG company.

Though I haven't seen the show yet, I think we can now stop saying that this show will be gone by June.

I am thrilled to death over the positive reviews for this show.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 11/2/06 at 11:58pm

What time does the Post review usually come out?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 12:09am

Usually not until after 3am or so.

[McFrenzied]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 12:18am

I thought the Talkin'Broadway review was insightful as well. As someone who hasn't seen the show yet, it was great to read a review that wasn't just all about Ebersole. And Talkin'Broadway DOES like a lot..I remember his review for Lt. of Inishmore was a rave. That said, Congratulatons to Grey Gardens on the other rave reviews!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 12:37am

Newsday is Positive:

"Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, have finally made it to Broadway - and what a welcome addition they are. That their big break comes long after these world-class eccentrics were alive to bask in stardom is just one of the twisted, tender ironies of their pop-culture infamy.

"Grey Gardens," the musical about the bizarre cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, has taken over the Walter Kerr Theatre as if to the manor born. This audacious interpolation of the 1975 cult-hit documentary has transferred from Playwrights Horizons with all of its original pleasures and several significant new ones.

______________________________________________________________


The improvements start with an expanded prologue that asks, in tabloid voice-over, "How could American royalty fall so far, so fast?" Young "Little" Edie has been recast with Erin Davie, who not only looks like a younger Ebersole but also brings a febrile quality that suggests she could unravel without much encouragement.

Composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie have rearranged a few of their stylish pastiche songs, adding at least one and removing a few others to make the first act almost as entertaining as the second. The first act is done as a 1940s musical, complete with fox trots and marches. It is set on the day of the party celebrating young Edie's putative engagement to Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. The second half is more like a new-old Sondheim musical, if the dark master of uneven phrase lengths and internal rhymes had ever toyed with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

_______________________________________________________________

But all eyes come back to Little Edie, a fast-talking, proud loser with a fashion eye for girdles, leopard-prints, safety pins and turbans made of sweaters - grandly designed by William Ivey Long. Ebersole, who finds more voices in her head than most of us have friends, shreds our hearts with the lament, "Another Winter in a Summer Town." Lest she get bathetic, she is proudly ridiculous in a harrowingly uncoordinated marching song.

"All I needed was an audience," she tells Jerry. She has one now."


http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-etgrey4956338nov03,0,5805446,print.story

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 12:51am

I adore GREY GARDENS. And even though Brantley isn't wetting himself with unconditional praise, his review is still far better than I thought he'd be. I never anticipated so many reviews would be as positive as they are.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 12:57am

The Daily News is Positive:

"In "Grey Gardens," Christine Ebersole delivers a bona fide star turn that is awesome, amazing and astonishing - and that's just the A's.

The musical, which opened last night, is inspired by and named after the 1975 documentary about Jackie Onassis' eccentric cousins, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little" Edie Beale, who lived in a filthy, flea-infested Hamptons mansion.

Book writer Doug Wright, lyricist Michael Korie and composer Scott Frankel have turned that odd grist into a funny and poignant riches-to-rags story ("based," according to a Playbill note, "on both fact and fiction") that boldly trips through time and musical motifs.

________________________________________________________________


Since the show's run at Playwrights Horizons this year, director Michael Greif has added a prologue set in 1973, seemingly to bridge the gap between the look, mood and music of Acts I (a drawing-room melodrama) and II (a nutty freak show). It doesn't really succeed. The pretty, high-strung Little Edie in the first half bears little resemblance to the bizarre woman she becomes.

That doesn't diminish the accomplishments of Korie and Frankel, who have written a glorious score. The show's final number, "Another Winter in a Summer Town," is also one of the finest. Raw and ravishing, it vividly expresses where Little Edie has been and where she's going.

The number provides one of many high points for Ebersole, who sings and acts with crystal clarity and draws from a deep well of emotion. She is always 100% in control. Ebersole already has a Tony, but this performance catapults her high into the Broadway heavens. She won't be coming down to earth for a long while. And after you see her in "Grey Gardens," neither will you. "

Updated On: 11/3/06 at 12:57 AM

[C is for Company]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 1:40am

Margo, which paper/review column does Michael Musto review for? I saw him exiting the theater the night I saw it and he rode his little bike away.

I love what they're saying, but honestly I enjoyed Davie and Act 1 so much more than I thought I would. Don't hate on me, but I enjoyed Act 1 the most. I thought Ebersole played so strongly into Edith and how she behaves. I listened intently and heard so many traces of the Edith that Wilson plays in Act 2. Those women created such a strong portrait of that woman that I was just caught off guard. And Davie was a true force, I loved her so much. It was so upsetting at the end of the second act seeing her running out and putting the scarf back where Edie would later get it from the attic :-/

[uncageg]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 1:54am

Isn't he with the Village Voice? I don't really care for him! He can be pretty snotty.

It looks like Michael Feingold does most of the major Theatre reviews for the Village Voice.

Updated On: 11/3/06 at 01:54 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 2:15am

Musto is a gossip columnist for the Voice who occasionally includes brief theatre reviews in his columns. Michael Feingold is the main theatre critic for the Voice (they have several) and has been for over 35 years and is, IMO, by far the best and most knowledgable theatre critic in town. He's also a well-respected translator (especially Brecht) and dramaturg.


The Newark Star-Ledger is Positive:

"While this bizarrely beautiful musical has been revised somewhat from its earlier version, the event's offbeat qualities will scarcely attract customers craving a conventional song-and-dance affair. (Their loss.)

Guaranteed, anybody who sees director Michael Greif's thoughtfully designed and staged production will never, ever forget Ebersole's phenomenal double turn as resplendent Edith and far-out Little Edie. A thousand words more cannot do justice to Ebersole's exceptional artistry. She's a wonder, that's all.

Expertly drawling out her zingers, Wilson's crotchety latter-day Edith is droll company. McMartin looks grand as disdainful Major Bouvier and later as TV evangelist Rev. Norman Vincent Peale. Cavenaugh's chipper Kennedy heir contrasts with his space-y handyman in the second act. Michael Potts' unflappable houseman and Bob Stillman's tippling piano player lend rich shades to this twilight zone of a musical.

A visit to "Grey Gardens" on Broadway may not be for everybody, but it's nevertheless an extraordinary trip."


http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1162535379121120.xml&coll=1

[uncageg]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 2:23am

Margo, I don't know much about Feingold so I read some of his reviews. After seeing your post about him and how long he has been there, it is surprising to me that he went into "The Color Purple" without having at least seen the movie. I know a lot of people didn't or even read the book. But, if memory serves me right, practically all of the reviews I read had references to the book or movie. Just a thought!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 2:25am

NY Sun is Mixed:

"Grey Gardens" may have moved from the cramped quarters of off-Broadway to roomier digs, but no house is spacious enough to keep Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, "Little" Edie, out of each other's thinning hair. If a 28-room, cat- and raccoon-infested Hamptons mansion wasn't big enough for this unforgettable tandem, what chance does Broadway have?

Working from the superb 1975 documentary by the Maysles brothers documentary that immortalized these two iconic, possibly mentally ill recluses (who happened to also be Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin) in 1975, composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie and book writer Doug Wright have furnished Edie and Edith with a haunting, tuneful rumination on fading glamour, fraying nerves, and the transitory but vital rewards of self-deception.

They are hardly the typical ingredients for a Broadway musical, and "Grey Gardens" is almost never typical. Even when its ambitions outstrip its execution, it succeeds in its central, seemingly paradoxical goal: to create a grownup show about two women for whom growing up is unimaginable.

________________________________________________________________

The net result of the extensive Act I revisions in terms of quality is negligible. A toothless new duet for Edie and Joe called "Goin' Places" substitutes razzmatazz for the deft one-upsmanship that punctuated the original song in its place, and the Major has an ineffectual new song that addresses the Bouvier women's emphasis on marrying well. But the streamlined book adds a welcome bit of ambiguity to Edith's motives, and "The Girl Who Has Everything," an introductory ballad that both honors and condemns Little Edie ("The crowds and the clamor / Aroused by her glamour / Will fade like the echo of a chime"), marks a pronounced improvement over its predecessor.

_______________________________________________________________


The recasting of the younger Edie also pays off.Sara Gettelfinger, who created the role off-Broadway, conveyed a robust, almost brittle self-assurance that curdled only after great provocation. Ms. Davie, by contrast, brings a weaker, more tremulous strain to the role; this Edie suspects ruination is perpetually lurking around the corner. She seems to know almost as much about her cloistered future as we do, and the realization is poignant to watch. Ms. Gettelfinger's portrayal may have provided bigger fireworks, but the current portrayal works better as a beacon of what lies ahead.

The shambling fabulosity of Little Edie, however, remains unbowed once we meet her in Act II, in the form of Ms. Ebersole. Edie's do-it-yourself fashion sense is as maniacally outre as ever: "Re-invent the objet trouvé./ Make a poncho from a duvet. / Then you can be / With Cousin Lee / On Mister Blackwell's list," she sings in the memorable "The Revolutionary Costume for Today." (Costume designer William Ivey Long's riotous embellishments could start a revolution of their own.)

"Grey Gardens," while fizzy and fun in Act I, gets its emotional heft from the subsequent descent into decrepitude. This stems in part from Mr. Wright's shrewd adaptation of the film — his new material rests very comfortably alongside the swaths of dialogue lifted verbatim — but far more from the glorious performances of Ms. Ebersole and Ms. Wilson, who make up the finest onstage pair musical theatre has seen in years.

Never mind their uncanny portrayals of the Beales or the fact that Ms. Ebersole's transformation into the blinking, paranoid Edie immediately follows her flawlessly chic take on the 1941 Edith. While Ms. Ebersole has certainly deserved the extensive praise she's received, Ms. Wilson matches her line for line and note for note in Act II. Their confrontations pulse with a punchdrunk weariness that one rarely finds in a Broadway play, let alone in a musical; the fact that the two women also sing marvelously seems almost like a bonus.

Unfortunately, the second act's structural flaws, most notably an overreliance on the ensemble, have yet to be addressed.Ghostly Bouviers and Kennedys still lurk around the mansion to lend harmonic support throughout Act II, which remains a grave mistake. Tossing a chorus into, say, Edie's dazzlingly arrhythmic "military dance" — a scene that the film captured with one fixed camera shot — grievously undermines the oppressive sense of solitude that pervades every one of those 28 rooms. And Messrs. Frankel and Korie's 1973 material, while often pleasing to the ear (the ballad "Another Winter in a Summer Town" is particularly strong), lacks the stylistic cohesion of their '40s period pastiche."



http://www.nysun.com/article/42841

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 2:50am

Clive Barnes gives it two-and-a-half stars:

"For the show, book writer Doug Wright has ingeniously expanded the story, providing it with an imaginatively truthful prequel set in 1941. This clever mix of fact and fancy, unlike the documentary, first shows the Bouvier clan in all its heady, if doomed, glory.

Wright's smart book stitches together a most intriguing storyline, which adroitly gives answers before it asks questions.

Yet for all its narrative interest, it's still a musical that sets out with one grave, even deadly, disadvantage. Its music.

This derivative score, by Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics), sounds like a secondhand, second-rate pastiche.

There's a touch of Cole Porter here, more than a whiff of Noel Coward there, a tad of Irving Berlin, even Rudolf Friml or George M. Cohan, and, of course, Stephen Sondheim. If there's anyone I've left out, rest assured Frankel and Korie haven't.

The show has been considerably revised since the off-Broadway version at Playwrights Horizons and its subsequent cast recording, to little avail.

On the plus side, there's still the suave staging by Michael Greif, the stylishly correct costumes by William Ivey Long and a few elegant and eloquent performances from the veteran John McMartin, Michael Potts and Bob Stillman.

And then there's Ebersole, who brings off a dazzling histrionic double. Not only does she inhabit, with eerie possessiveness, Jackie O's cousin, the middle-age "Little" Edie Beale, but in the 1941 throwback she plays her own mother, Edith Bouvier Beale, with the unerring flamboyance of a musical-comedy flapper.

Flash-forward to 1973, and that same mother, the now truculent but undimmed Edith, is in the sure hands of Mary Louise Wilson, who endows cranky geriatrics with a perky dignity.

Both Ebersole and Wilson share the same diva flair, but have to work like graceful demons to illuminate the long shadows and deep shallows of those aptly named "Grey Gardens."

It's a goodish musical, but not quite goodish enough - it first overdoses on cute nostalgia, but finally it's the score that does it in. You can't have a musical without the music."


http://www.nypost.com/seven/11032006/entertainment/theater/gardens_wilts_when_drowned_in_music_theater_clive_barnes.htm

[TheActr97J]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 3:44am

All in all this seems like great news for the cast. I can't wait to finally see this show.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 3:55am

I am so glad I won't be one of the only ones on here who realizes this show will easily be around June 07. Even if the reviews had been lukewarm, it would have been around. But they are hot hot hot! So gear up! GEAR UP!

Posted: 11/3/06 at 7:07am

i'm thrilled with these reviews!

even the mixed or negative comments are thoughtful, & i appreciate that.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 8:41am

Im happy for any show that gets good review, though I didnt like it as much as most of the critics, I tend to agree with Brantley who still thinks Act 1 is too long and there is no viable connection of how young Eddie became who she is by Act 2. But I did LOVE Ebersol & Wilsons performances. Although to dub Ebersol a Tony winner this early in the season, especially since she just won 6 yrs ago, is standing on shaky ground at best. Yes, she was brilliant...but with the likes of Kristen Chenowith, Audra MacDonald, Ashley Brown, Stephanie Block, and who knows who else before the end of the Tony season (I hear Donna Murphy may even make a Broadway bow within the season) - crowning Ebersol the victor now isn't the best of all Karma.
Updated On: 11/3/06 at 08:41 AM

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 8:58am

I agree. I would love for Christine to win, but one should never discount Audra. The woman burps and wins a Tony.

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 9:18am

Even with the rave reviews, are tourists going to pay top dollar (or half price on TKTS) to see this show over the next few months?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 9:24am

I'm excited that the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but Ebersole aside, they aren't exactly "raves" - I'd be surprised if GG ever had more than a few weeks at more than 90% capacity - and no Trace I still don't think it will be a big sell with tourists - SWEENEY being a good analogy.

It should definitely stick around til the summer though.
Updated On: 11/3/06 at 09:24 AM

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 9:33am

Ok, Michael Bennett, so is GG's selling point comparable to Sweeney's? If so, with the positive reviews, it should last until September 2, 2007.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 9:34am

I think pretty close to it! Unless it really triumphs at the Tony Awards.

[Smartful Dodger]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 9:45am

Honestly, the show is most of what the reviewers have made of it. I'd seen the first preview, which I'd written had major problems with the opening number. Last night, I was thrilled to see the prologue had been switched from a focus on the Little Edie (1973) to Little Edie (1941) transition to one with Edith (1973) to Edith (1941), singing "The Girl Who Has Everything." It worked brilliantly. The whole first act seemed wonderfully tight and an appropriate set up to the second. Despite some of the very valid criticisms published overnight and posted on this board in recent weeks, this really is a must-see show for anyone who loves theatre. I can't recommend it more strongly than Brantley does in the last line of his review -- for what that's worth...