#1
Posted: 11/2/06 at 6:35pm
Talkin Broadway is Mixed:
"Once upon a time, there lived a woman who was the toast of all those around her. Those closest to her considered her their greatest hope for a shining future, and encouraged as many as possible to fill her opulent home so she could beguile them with her beauty and grace. But no fawning admirers could disguise the truth that she was ultimately a daughter who could be cut down to size by her mother just when she most needed her support.
This is not the story of Edie Beale of the musical Grey Gardens, which has shakily made the improbable leap from Playwrights Horizons to Broadway's Walter Kerr. No, the charmed woman of the moment is Christine Ebersole, who's starring in it under the most fortuitous, unlikely, and difficult of circumstances: The show was brought to Broadway on the strength of her alone.
She made a splash unlike any in recent memory when the show opened this past spring: Some critics anointed her; others nearly deified her, all but proclaiming her performance unmatched in the annals of musical theatre. True, most everyone admitted the show itself was no timeless achievement, but what did that matter when there was Ebersole's magnificence in which to bask?
This production, directed by Michael Greif, might have been brought to Broadway to capitalize on Ebersole's once-in-a-career acclaim, but authors Scott Frankel (music), Michael Korie (lyrics), and Doug Wright (book) have worked tirelessly since Off-Broadway to improve it into a more worthy vehicle for its star. In rewriting scenes and replacing songs, they've succeeded in making Grey Gardens unquestionably tighter and more dramatically satisfying than it was when it first opened in March. But it has become so at the expense of Ebersole's luminescence and the electric theatricality it generated.
______________________________________________________________
The story is no longer merely about two zany, dysfunctional women. When Wilson sings "The Cake I Had" (she ate it, too) or "Jerry Likes My Corn" (about the young man, played by Cavenaugh, who completes her life in ways her adulterous husband couldn't), she draws us into Edith's agonized struggle, collapsing her dilapidated, 28-room prison into a captivating pinpoint. Edith's voice, wobbly and uncertain, possessing only a whisper of its former vibrancy, pierces the heart and reminds us that time can - and eventually will - rob us of everything.
Wilson's dazzling work as the grandest of fallen grande dames remains the true treasure of Grey Gardens, even richer and more rewarding now than it was Off-Broadway. The suave Stillman has transformed the brittle George into the first act's wisecracking spiritual center, Edith's true love and her crucial emotional anchor during her mounting crises. Their parting duet, the quiet, Coward-ish "Drift Away," is now the show's saddest and most uplifting number, and one of the few times Frankel and Korie's score unequivocally feels more like sophisticated, adult musical theatre than high-level Fringe Festival camp.
Stillman and Wilson, giving the production's most confident and Tony caliber-performances, aren't matched by most of their castmates. McMartin can't make his archetypal disapproving father figure into a real person any more than Cavenaugh can bring anything but a silly accent to the caddish, sketchily drawn Joe; Davie, though finding more hinges to loosen in young Edie than did her Off-Broadway predecessor Sara Gettelfinger, still never completely triumphs as a nervous breakdown in the making. If Wright's book now brings additional clarity and humanity to their first-act concerns, they all remain supporting players designed to dissolve into our memories as 1941 evaporates into history. (Their reappearances in bit parts in the weakest sections of Act II don't help.)
______________________________________________________________
But in a second act about Edith's fall from grace, Ebersole's personal journey as the show's star seems incomplete. With Edie disconnected from the primary story of Edith's decline, Ebersole's showpiece numbers - the ramblingly comic "The Revolutionary Costume for Today," about her unique fashion sense, and the patriotic, excrescent "The House We Live In" - no longer endear us to the actress channeling an eccentric soul, but distract us from the dissipating spirit Ebersole spent the first act making us care so much about. (A revised Act I opening, prominently featuring Wilson's crumbling Edith, further underscores this.)
The point is never made more succinctly than in "Another Winter in a Summer Town," Ebersole's haunting 11-o'clock number (and the show's best song) in which Edie finally arranges to escape her mother's enveloping shadow and fulfill what remains of her own destiny. When Edith cries out just as Edie steps outside, you can feel Edie's heart shatter as she realizes where her future unavoidably lies. But while Ebersole mesmerizes here, your eye can't help but drift to the woman abandoned 32 years earlier, and who might be again now. She means too much to you for you to allow Ebersole the final word.
While this is devastating to the show - no star vehicle can survive the loss of its star - it's as right and compelling as this musical gets. When the show was about Ebersole, it grabbed your soul; now that it's about Edith, it grabs your heart. If Grey Gardens can only do one, the latter is the correct choice, though one wishes this musical could - like the greatest shows in the canon - do both at the same time.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/GGardens.html
"Once upon a time, there lived a woman who was the toast of all those around her. Those closest to her considered her their greatest hope for a shining future, and encouraged as many as possible to fill her opulent home so she could beguile them with her beauty and grace. But no fawning admirers could disguise the truth that she was ultimately a daughter who could be cut down to size by her mother just when she most needed her support.
This is not the story of Edie Beale of the musical Grey Gardens, which has shakily made the improbable leap from Playwrights Horizons to Broadway's Walter Kerr. No, the charmed woman of the moment is Christine Ebersole, who's starring in it under the most fortuitous, unlikely, and difficult of circumstances: The show was brought to Broadway on the strength of her alone.
She made a splash unlike any in recent memory when the show opened this past spring: Some critics anointed her; others nearly deified her, all but proclaiming her performance unmatched in the annals of musical theatre. True, most everyone admitted the show itself was no timeless achievement, but what did that matter when there was Ebersole's magnificence in which to bask?
This production, directed by Michael Greif, might have been brought to Broadway to capitalize on Ebersole's once-in-a-career acclaim, but authors Scott Frankel (music), Michael Korie (lyrics), and Doug Wright (book) have worked tirelessly since Off-Broadway to improve it into a more worthy vehicle for its star. In rewriting scenes and replacing songs, they've succeeded in making Grey Gardens unquestionably tighter and more dramatically satisfying than it was when it first opened in March. But it has become so at the expense of Ebersole's luminescence and the electric theatricality it generated.
______________________________________________________________
The story is no longer merely about two zany, dysfunctional women. When Wilson sings "The Cake I Had" (she ate it, too) or "Jerry Likes My Corn" (about the young man, played by Cavenaugh, who completes her life in ways her adulterous husband couldn't), she draws us into Edith's agonized struggle, collapsing her dilapidated, 28-room prison into a captivating pinpoint. Edith's voice, wobbly and uncertain, possessing only a whisper of its former vibrancy, pierces the heart and reminds us that time can - and eventually will - rob us of everything.
Wilson's dazzling work as the grandest of fallen grande dames remains the true treasure of Grey Gardens, even richer and more rewarding now than it was Off-Broadway. The suave Stillman has transformed the brittle George into the first act's wisecracking spiritual center, Edith's true love and her crucial emotional anchor during her mounting crises. Their parting duet, the quiet, Coward-ish "Drift Away," is now the show's saddest and most uplifting number, and one of the few times Frankel and Korie's score unequivocally feels more like sophisticated, adult musical theatre than high-level Fringe Festival camp.
Stillman and Wilson, giving the production's most confident and Tony caliber-performances, aren't matched by most of their castmates. McMartin can't make his archetypal disapproving father figure into a real person any more than Cavenaugh can bring anything but a silly accent to the caddish, sketchily drawn Joe; Davie, though finding more hinges to loosen in young Edie than did her Off-Broadway predecessor Sara Gettelfinger, still never completely triumphs as a nervous breakdown in the making. If Wright's book now brings additional clarity and humanity to their first-act concerns, they all remain supporting players designed to dissolve into our memories as 1941 evaporates into history. (Their reappearances in bit parts in the weakest sections of Act II don't help.)
______________________________________________________________
But in a second act about Edith's fall from grace, Ebersole's personal journey as the show's star seems incomplete. With Edie disconnected from the primary story of Edith's decline, Ebersole's showpiece numbers - the ramblingly comic "The Revolutionary Costume for Today," about her unique fashion sense, and the patriotic, excrescent "The House We Live In" - no longer endear us to the actress channeling an eccentric soul, but distract us from the dissipating spirit Ebersole spent the first act making us care so much about. (A revised Act I opening, prominently featuring Wilson's crumbling Edith, further underscores this.)
The point is never made more succinctly than in "Another Winter in a Summer Town," Ebersole's haunting 11-o'clock number (and the show's best song) in which Edie finally arranges to escape her mother's enveloping shadow and fulfill what remains of her own destiny. When Edith cries out just as Edie steps outside, you can feel Edie's heart shatter as she realizes where her future unavoidably lies. But while Ebersole mesmerizes here, your eye can't help but drift to the woman abandoned 32 years earlier, and who might be again now. She means too much to you for you to allow Ebersole the final word.
While this is devastating to the show - no star vehicle can survive the loss of its star - it's as right and compelling as this musical gets. When the show was about Ebersole, it grabbed your soul; now that it's about Edith, it grabs your heart. If Grey Gardens can only do one, the latter is the correct choice, though one wishes this musical could - like the greatest shows in the canon - do both at the same time.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/GGardens.html
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
