Malibu Seen: Grey Matter

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Rachel York and Betty Buckley hit the high notes in “Grey Gardens” at the Ahmanson Theater. 

Malibu theater lovers can’t resist a good musical come summertime. This year, it’s at the Ahmanson Theater with the smash hit “Grey Gardens.”

“Grey Gardens” is a musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. It is based on the 1975 documentary about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (“Big Edie”) and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale (“Little Edie”), by Albert and David Maysles. The two characters promise a nonstop evening of entertainment.

The Beales were Jacqueline Kennedy’s aunt and cousin, respectively. Set at Grey Gardens, the Bouviers’ mansion in East Hampton, New York, the musical tracks the progression of the two women’s lives from their original status as wealthy and socially polished aristocrats to their eventual largely isolated existence in a home overrun by cats and cited for repeated health code violations. However, its more central purpose is to untangle the complicated dynamics of their dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship.

The first act depicts the characters in their heyday and is a speculative take on what their lives might have been like when they were younger, when Little Edie was 24 and Big Edie was 47. The second act is set 32 years later, in 1973, at the decaying Grey Gardens Estate and hews closely to the Maysles Brothers’ documentary in its portrayal of them in their later years, when Little Edie is 56 and Big Edie is 79. While the first act is almost entirely fictional (the central event, the engagement between Little Edie and Joseph Kennedy, never happened), the second act takes much of its dialogue and action directly from the film. The same actress who plays Big Edie in the first act plays Little Edie in the second act.

The musical “Grey Gardens,” directed by Michael Wilson, plays at Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre through August 14.

 

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE…

Even when Grey Gardens falls away and the weather starts to chill, the Central Theater Group has more in store. They’ll be moving to the Mark Taper Forum to explore the story of “August Wilson’s Ma,” which begins at the end of the month alongside “A View From the Bridge,” Arthur Miller’s classic work. The play tells the tale of a Brooklyn longshoreman who is obsessed with his 17-year-old niece following an incredible fit of jealously over an immigrant. Sounds like the right stuff going into these roller coaster times.