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Edie Beale lives! Not only does she live, she rules. Already a
cult hero since the release of Albert and David Maysles’ 1974
documentary Grey Gardens, Edie Beale is about to blow up
bigger than ever – and not only because Hollywood’s come knocking,
promising a feature film based on the Maysles’ documentary. The mind
reels: the catfights, the backstabbing, as Hollywood’s women of a
certain age all jostle for position for a role that’s certain to do
for their careers what Baby Jane did for Bette and Joan, and
Mommie did for Faye. The opportunity of a lifetime – to be
adored by film queens, to own the midnight screenings and revival
houses for eternity. A prime seat in camp heaven, never to be
usurped.
Ladies, take your
seats. Currently, the role is owned by Christine Ebersole. Starring
as both Big Edie and Little Edie in two acts separated by thirty
years, Ebersole dominates the riveting musical adaptation of the
Maysles’ brothers documentary, also titled – what else? – Grey
Gardens, now playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
Given the national –
universal? – fixation on celebrity combined with our
schadenfreude at the crash-and-burn antics of those whom we
elevate to the klieg light pantheon, the story of Jackie O’s
eccentric relatives living in East Hampton squalor is a natural fit
for America’s increasingly-bizarre appetites.
Not unlike one of
those Before and After Renovation photographs that pepper a
shelter magazine, albeit in reverse order, the first act, taking
place in 1943, reveals Grey Gardens, the East Hampton estate of the
Beales, at its sumptuous peak (which so happens also to be the last
hurrah of America’s class system whereby any and all who are not
white, heterosexual, and male are deemed second-class citizens).
As the musical begins,
young Edie Bouvier Beale is to be married to young Joseph Kennedy,
thereby insuring ongoing status for both dynastic families. Ah, but
such a future is not to be – and not only because, as any follower
of the curse of the Kennedy clan knows, Joe Kennedy, Jr. is not long
for the world. No, more importantly, at least for this production,
is the fact that Little Edie’s sobriquet amongst the locals is “Body
Beautiful” – and we can’t have that sort of sordid nonsense
besmirching the Kennedy name, now can we? Oh, the rich layers of
irony – and therein is the almost-macabre appeal of the first act of
Grey Gardens: its “inside” view of a class of people from
whom a handful of individual tragedies will play out upon the
world’s stage.
Apart from Joe
Kennedy, Jr., there’s also Jackie and Lee as young girls, frolicking
about the gardens of the Beale estate – and to witness their
infatuation with the two Edies is to comprehend how girls of
privilege were groomed for their adult roles. Not for nothing were
the lives of such American females circumscribed by lineage and
money (not unlike the royals of Europe throughout the eighteenth
century), and to defy the conventions of one’s class was to court
stigma and ostracism – or as Little Edie makes painfully clear,
institutionalization at the hands of her father.
To be a woman such as
either of the two Edies, possessing of an artistic temperament –
well, best to confine yourself to fashion sketches and jottings in
your European journals as practiced by young Jackie and Lee. Best
not to sing minstrel songs, least of all in front of the neighbors.
And best not to have a reputation for being progressive,
independent, forward thinking, or creative. Best to squash your
personality and conform to the class which surrounds you – or else.
Else you end up like Big and Little Edie in Act Two of Grey
Gardens. Thirty years have passed since Little Edie’s
engagement party. The guests on the lawn have been replaced by
fifty-two cats. Pate or cat food? Who’s to say what’s on the plate?
In fact, there’s no one to entertain, except the neighbor boy who
comes around to look after the two Edies.
Mother and daughter,
all alone in that big house. You’ve got to have a sense of humor.
And Ms. Ebersole as Little Edie in Act Two comes out and greets her
audience: the neighbors, the locals, the curiosity-seekers intrigued
by all those articles about Jackie O’s eccentric East Hampton
relatives. And Little Edie’s going to show them a thing or two. Now
wearing an outfit of her own design, she’s no longer living
according to the dictates of her class, her family, her bloodlines,
her past.
It’s freedom, of a
sort. Hard earned, but there it is. No longer confined by paternal
expectations, Little Edie lives her days according to the voices in
her head. Her head, not someone else’s. Her father would’ve put
her away, she says. Lobotomized her, maybe – just look what
happened to that Rosemary Kennedy. That’s how it was for women
then. And gay men. And blacks. Minorities without voices during a
time when class ruled. You know your place; now, get in line – or
else.
Or else— You listen to
your octogenarian mother sing about the pleasures of corn cooked on
a hot plate. Or else— You wait for the local stoner boy, your
Marble Faun, to come over and listen to you sing. You think about
him thinking about you. You think about the talent you squandered
and how it is you ended up here, alone with “Mother, Darling.” You
two were the ones who couldn’t strangle the creative urges inside –
and this is what it got you: “Another Winter in a Summer Town.”
In the end, it’s the
question we all face: Should I have done it differently? Could I
have? The plague of aging: dashed hopes and broken dreams,
optimism smashed upon the rocks of youth. And yet somehow we carry
on, caring for each other, sharing soup. That’s what we are left
with: the little pleasures of life.
Grey Gardens is one of the big ones.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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