I went to the performance last weekend that had the talkback with Doug Wright, Scott Frankel, and Michael Korie. The talkback was the best talkback I have ever been to. It was very long and detailed, and the 3 of them were very into it (it was over 40 minutes long, and I got the sense the 3 of them would have been happy to have talked for hours). They talked a lot about how the show evolved over time and why songs and other elements were taken out or changed. They also seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) version (they said it was the first time since the Broadway production that all 3 of them have seen the same version at the same performance). It was also great to see the actors in the show also sitting in the audience and listening to the talkback just as intently as everyone else; the cast seems very dedicated to the show.
SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW BELOW (NOT REALLY SPOILERS FOR THE PHILADELPHIA PRODUCTION ITSELF)
In terms of the production itself, the thrust was very different from the Broadway production. I felt that Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson were playing the characters from the documentary come to life, while I felt the PTC actresses were playing more characters "based on" the documentary rather than really trying to imitate them -- speech inflections, costuming and other aspects were not exact replications of the documentary. Hollis Resnik's performance in particular, I felt, was not an imitation of Ebersole; it would not surprise me to hear that she has never seen Ebersole's performance.
The "size" of the performances was also very different than in New York. Both Ebersole and Wilson were playing outsize, larger-than-life characters, while the PTC actresses were playing them on a smaller scale, which made their dynamic very different. One thing that they mentioned in the talkback was that the Maysles brothers told them that they should make sure not to take sides between Big Edie and Little Edie, and you could look at their relationship either as Big Edie is preventing Little Edie from spreading her wings or that Big Edie is protecting Little Edie from a world with which she couldn't cope. In the Broadway version, I felt that Wilson's Big Edie was such a big presence that you could understand both why Little Edie wanted to get away and why she couldn't. Little Edie's decision to stay at the end was heart rending; she didn't have the strength to leave and was doomed to stay trapped in that crazy house forever. And Ebersole was so charismatic in that performance that she made it seem that Little Edie would make it all work, somehow, if she could just get away. In the PTC version with the less outsize interpretations, Big Edie is more dotty than dominating and Little Edie seems much more helpless and incapable of being on her own (when she says the line about how her father would have had her committed, my reaction was, "well, of course he would have," rather than the stunned silence/shock/new and deepened understanding that greeted the line in New York). Little Edie's decision to stay at the end in the PTC version seemed to be less of a cruel fate to me than an inevitability. In the Broadway version, I think the pendulum for me was more towards Big Edie stifling Little Edie by keeping Little Edie in her box, while the PTC version has the pendulum the other way, with Big Edie and Grey Gardens seeming to be the only thing that's keeping Little Edie from an institution, not because she's so overtly crazy but because she couldn't handle the real world.
I also hated the projections, but I usually hate projections that are there for budgetary reasons rather than for artistic reasons. Although the Broadway version was not as elaborate as many musicals, this is definitely a regional production in terms of budget. (I am not faulting PTC for that, just trying to calibrate appropriate expectations for board members who might be attending.)
(All IMO, of course. YMMV.)
"What was the name of that cheese that I like?"
"you can't run away forever...but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start"
"well I hope and I pray, that maybe someday, you'll walk in the room with my heart"
Updated On: 6/7/09 at 05:05 PM
