Grey Gardens, Jackie O's Relatives Get the Spotlight

“That’s Grey Gardens for you,” a character says in the first act The Drama Group’s latest musical, “Those on the outside are dying to get in. Those on the inside are dying to get out.”

It’s one of the sadder lines in what is nonetheless an extremely entertaining look at the lives of Edith and Edie Beale, a reclusive mother-and-daughter duo who happened to be relatives of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.  The women, who lived together in a dilapidated, 28-room mansion, Grey Gardens, in the East Hamptons, gained notoriety and fame via an expose on their living conditions in the National Enquirer and a documentary on their lives.

The show Grey Gardens is the first-ever musical adapted from a documentary, and it is well-staged and well-performed at The Drama Group’s Studio Theatre. The play is set in two eras, 1941, when their home, and family, were in their prime, and 1973, when there was such squalor at Grey Gardens the County Health Department paid a call.

The lead roles of Edith and Edie are dual-cast, and the actresses playing the women’s younger selves have a somewhat tougher job, since both women were still living at the edge of conventional society at that point. The first act concerns itself with Edie’s (Meghan Falica-Hoyt) engagement party.

Edie is marrying Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., and her younger cousins, Jacqueline and Caroline “Lee” Bouvier (Ginny Mae Brunner and Raven Brzeszkiewicz) are at Grey Gardens for the party. Her mother, who pursued a singing career before her marriage, is plans to sing nine songs for the party guests, with the help of her accompanist/companion (Nathan Krug, in fine voice and comic timing.)

In Act Two, Regina A. Gadotti and Sandi Thielman take over the roles of Edith and Edie respectively, and together they are a tour de force. Gadotti in particular tears into her meaty role, making the most of her number, “The Cake I Had.”

The entire cast plays multiple roles throughout the show. At one point, all appear  as ghost-like figures meant to represent the mansion’s many cats (the real Grey Gardens is said to have had 52.) Rick Rapp portrays Edith’s father, J.V. Bouvier, in Act One and Norman Vincent Peale, a favorite radio performer of Edith’s in Act Two. The roles give him two terrific songs, “Marry Well” and “Choose To Be Happy.”

The show’s unusual set is almost a character in itself, going to restrained elegance in Act One to unhinged squalor in Act Two.

runs through this weekend, with shows at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 12, and 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 13. Tickets are $18; for more information call (708) 755-3444.