Review: GREY GARDENS at The Barn Players in Kansas City

"Grey Gardens," the 2007 character piece that originally featured a bravura turn and a Best Actress in a Musical Tony for Christine Ebersole, is the current, ambitious, fall offering from the Barn Players Community Theater in Mission through October 1. "Grey Gardens" tells the story of a Mother and Daughter who struggle through a steep descent from American Aristocracy to poverty and health department threats of eviction from their Long Island mansion. It is a story we may never have heard except for that the Mother in our story was also Aunt to the late Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

This is the story of a family tragedy. The audience chuckles in places, probably out of nervousness, but this is difficult theater and difficult music. It is dependent almost singularly on a single actress playing the mother, Edith Bouvier Beale and later the daughter Edie (played here by Cori Anne Weber) in separate acts.

"Grey Gardens" is the name given to the 28-room Beale family mansion at East Hampton, Long Island, New York. It is one of those Gilded Age monuments to excess one sees in the opening credits of the TV series "Royal Pains."

Major John V. Bouvier was a successful attorney/financier/stockbroker who settled his family in East Hampton around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the descendant of a French furniture maker who immigrated to America around the time of Napoleon's European defeat. Status was important to John V. Beale. He served in the Judge Advocate General Corps during World War I and preferred to be addressed by his military rank, Major, for the rest of his life. After he was fortunate to achieve financial success, he hired publication of a faux family history. The upshot being a family motto handed down to his children; "The hallmark of aristocracy is responsibility."

One of the Bouvier daughters, Edith, (one of five siblings) married a lawyer/financier (Phelan Beale) from her father's firm and the family established themselves at Grey Gardens. Edith fancied herself a performer, amateur singer, and established socialite in New York City and in the Hamptons. Her whole life was all about her. By 1929, Phelan Beale had deserted Edith. Phelan Beale gave Edith Grey Gardens and provided child support for her three children, but no alimony. Edith already had a trust fund established by her father. Edith's two sons grew up and left the home. Her youngest child Edie remained at home.

Although the musical play begins with a short establishing passage in 1973 with Grey Gardens in a terrible state of disrepair, the majority of Act I tells Edith and Edie's story in 1941 on the brink of World War II. Edie is a very pretty and talented girl. Pictures of the real Edie show a family resemblance to Jacqueline Bouvier. According to the play, she is about to announce her engagement to Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Mother Edith plans that she should give a concert to East Hampton society as main feature to her daughter's announcement.

Much to Edie's distress, it is all about Momma again. Passively aggressively, Edith torpedoes the engagement as she has previously done with other of Edie's suitors. Act I ends as Edie leaves home to become a model and performer in New York.

As Act II opens, thirty-two years have passed. It is 1973. Edie is back at Grey Gardens forced to be the unhappy caretaker of her Mother. Edith has gotten old and verges on senility. She has blown through her trust fund and (without other income) the grand home has become decrepit. The Major has passed away. Her sons do not seem to be contributing to their mother's welfare. Maintenance on the home has gone to pot and Edith has acquired more than 50 feral cats and a colony of rabid raccoons in the attic.

Edie has not fared well either. In fact, at 56 years-old, she is played by the same actress who portrayed Edith in Act I. She has become an eccentric. She fancies herself still fashionable and attractive. She dresses outlandishly in scraps of clothing from the glory days. Because of a medical affliction that has robbed her of her hair, she is never seen without an outlandish turban fastened around her chin.

The two are isolated in the grand wreck of a home, caring for the cats and each other while subsisting at least in part on what one suspects is cat food and soup. The neighbors have noticed. The county government has threatened them with eviction if necessary repairs are not made.

One would hope that the conflict might resolve in some way and these two women might be redeemed, but unfortunately, it is not to be. Edie has, in most ways, become her mother and the play closes with a reprise of the opening number "The Girl Who Has Everything."

In real life, Edith Beale died in 1977. Evie attempted to maintain the home for two more years, but finally it overwhelmed her. She eventually sold the home on condition it be rehabbed to its glory days to the late Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and his wife Journalist Sally Quinn.

Edie attempted a career as a cabaret singer in her 60's before dying in a studio apartment off Miami Beach at age 83.

"Grey Gardens" at the Barn Theatre is directed by Eric Magnus. In addition to Cori Anne Webber as Edith and the older Edie, it features Charlotte Gilman as Young Edie, Kay Noonan as older Edith, Kevin Hershberger as George Strong, David Loethen as Major Bouvier, Allyson Tinker as young Jacqueline Bouvier, Annalise Gray as Young Lee Bouvier, Hunter Hawkins as Joseph P Kennedy Jr., and San Leistico as the announcer.

Performances of Grey Gardens continue through October 1. Tickets are available at the Barn Players website and by telephone at 913-432-9100.

Photo courtesy of Barn Players

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