The curse of the Kennedys hangs heavy over the sorry tale of Grey Gardens, the bittersweet and sour musical with a score by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie and a book by Doug Wright.
The resplendent, 28-room mansion was once a jewel in the East Hampton crown, snapped up by Wall Street lawyer Phelan Beale in 1924. It stayed in the family for just over half a century, during which time its lustre would dull disastrously.
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, the future First Lady herself destined for tragedy, would often stay there as a child with her little sister Caroline ‘Lee’, as guests of their musically inclined socialite aunt, Edith ‘Big Edie’ Ewing Bouvier Beale, Phelan’s wife. The girls were fast friends with Big Edie’s daughter, later dubbed ‘Little Edie’.
The oft-absent Phelan sent word to Big Edie of their divorce by telegram shortly after the cessation of WWII, leaving her the house but very little means to maintain it. Little Edie left to pursue a showbusiness career in New York City but soon returned with her tail between her legs, her once-luscious hair lost to alopecia totalis.
Together they huddled, bickering in co-dependent disharmony as Grey Gardens gradually crumbled around them, filling up with festering rubbish as the water and heating failed, with the health department on the warpath alongside a cornucopia of cats, rats, raccoons, lice and fleas who promptly moved in.
Yikes, this sounds like it’s too sad to handle?
Look, you will feel the feels watching this mesmerising musical adapted from Albert and David Maysles’ 1975 cult classic documentary of the same name.
Anyone who has seen it will know that Big and Little Edie, as sad and lonely as they are and clearly struggling with their mental health, are also wildly entertaining characters with an innate ability to hiss endlessly quotable barbs at one another. If there were any justice in this too-cruel world, they would both have been Broadway divas.
Which is precisely why the Gimme Shelter film directors knew what they were onto, stepping back and allowing the Edies to say it all. It’s also why their film was destined to wind up as a musical, landing on Broadway in 2006, four short years after Little Edie’s passing (her poor mum died in 1977).
Who is involved with this production of ‘Grey Gardens’?
Grey Gardens is a fabulously entertaining show that zeroes in on the diva-down collapse of a grand dynasty, asking how on Earth we got here via a thoroughly frothy first act that’s as saucy as any soap opera.
West End Wicked star Helen Dallimore spectacularly inhabits Big Edie in her glory days in the '40s, resplendent in a green silk dress and an organza cloak, with costume designer Louisa Fitzgerald excelling across the board. Claudia Mirabello’s minimal yet somehow still maximalist set design ensures that Phelan glowers down from a portrait on the wall. He never appears, but as his wife issues party prep commands to her ever-loyal butler, Brooks (a twinkling Evan Evans), her absentee hubby’s presence lingers.
Big Edie’s sprucing up the joint to host Little Edie’s engagement party, with rising star Meg Williams effervescent as the hopeful young scion who dreams of flying free from her gilded cage. Her mum’s incessant, scene-stealing trilling puts Little Edie on edge, with her grimacingly pass-agg battle song ‘Mother Darling’ an early highlight.
While the history books suggest Little Edie only met JFK’s elder brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, once, she always insisted they planned to marry. The musical runs with her truth. The angular-jawed Luke Ward portrays him as an icily debonair, pragmatic type who only has eyes for the White House. If you don’t want spoilers, don’t Google why his lil bro bet him there.
Adeline Hunter sparkles as young Jackie, alongside Eleanor Flynn and Jessica Georgeson, sharing the role of little Lee. They’re put through their paces by the dashing, if demanding, Major Bouvier (a commanding David Hobson), the hot dog daddy to Big Edie who does not approve of her fanciful showboating, or her evidently gay in-house accompanist, George Gould Strong, played with soused spunk by a brill Nick Simpson-Deeks.
This marvellous ensemble is ably corralled by director Tyran Parke, with nimble choreography by Freya List and musical director Lyndall Dawson tinkling the ivories. Nick’s ghostly sound design – listen out for the real Edies – is complemented by Sidney Younger’s lighting that seems to catch the mist in the air.
Grey Gardens economically establishes the faultlines running through this fracturing family, ominously foreshadowing their house being swallowed whole.
So, do we get to the documentary?
Basically, though there’s no sign of the Mayles brothers. The luminous Dallimore seamlessly steps across generations to become the brought-low Little Edie in Grey Gardens’ '70s-set second act, with the towering Deidre Rubenstein, briefly glimpsed in a haunting prologue, becoming Big Edie.
An astonishingly expressive actor, Rubenstein’s face brings the tragedy and the tyranny as Big Edie shrieks commands at her daughter like the Major once did, all the while ensuring we understand her near-total dependence on Little Edie. Dallimore is the perfect foil, only increasing in theatrical stature as her character shrinks and bows, with Ward coming between them as the young handyman, Jerry, that tips things into Oedipal-adjacent discomfort in their woebegone fleapit.
When Little Edie dons her tatty fur coat for her swansong, ‘Around the World’, we understand it’s already too late to make the break. By the time she and her mother duet on the heartrending ‘Another Winter in a Summer Town’, you’ll never forget the Edies.
Who will love Grey Gardens?
Crazy cat/racoon folk of any persuasion, alongside those who like their musical theatre with a sass of camp, a slash of savagery and a lick of wistful melancholy.
'Grey Gardens' is on now at Fortyfivedownstairs until August 2, 2026. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.
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