Trisha Rapier delivered a dazzling star turn in Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only staging of Grey Gardens, an award-caliber performance made even more remarkable given the rehearsal-time limit for an Actors’ Equity-sanctioned concert staged reading: 25 hours max.

Making its Broadway debut in November of 2006 following a successful off-Broadway run earlier in the year, Grey Gardens recounts the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tale of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Jr., and if the name Bouvier rings a bell, it’s no wonder.

“Big Edie” (Rapier in Act One, Eileen Barnett in Act Two) was Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s aunt and her daughter “Little Edie” (Tal Fox in Act One, Rapier in Act Two) was Jackie O’s cousin, and by the time their story was first told in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens, the mother-daughter duo had bats in their belfry and a horde of cats in their dirty, decaying 28-room East Hampton mansion.

Act One takes us back to 1941, back to when Little Edie still had hope in her heart and a handsome fiancé in her future (Zachary Ford as JFK’s older brother Joseph Kennedy Jr.), but not for long given a checkered past that earned Edie the notorious nickname “Body Beautiful Bouvier” and a megalomaniacal mom not about to be abandoned by daughter dearest.

 Also figuring prominently pre-intermission are Big Edie’s live-in accompanist George Gould Strong (Glenn Rosenblum), because a woman with pipes like Big Edie could hardly live without her own personal live-in pianist; her faithful African-American major-domo Brooks, Sr. (Phillip Brandon); her eccentric, imperious uncle J.V. “Major” Bouvier (Robert Yacko); and a couple of preteen visitors who will grow up to be Jackie Kennedy Onassis (Sophie Peterson) and Princess Lee Radziwill (Ardyanna Ducusin).

Act Two flashes forward to the early 1970s with a middle-aged Little Edie gone decidedly bonkers, her now elderly mother more domineering and demented than ever, Brooks Jr. (Brandon) taking over as butler for a presumably retired or deceased Brooks Sr., homeless teen boy toy Jerry (Ford) doing odd jobs around the house, and evangelist Norman Vincent Peale (Yacko) coming in through the air waves.

If it’s not already clear, Oklahoma!, Hello, Dolly!, or MTG’s previous offering Brigadoon this is not, and truth be told, the oddball antics of two crazy mansion-mates is a tad too bizarre for my personal tastes.

That notwithstanding, the concert staged reading format allows audiences to focus on the characters, their weird and wacky stories (book by Doug Wright), and the nostalgia-inducing songs (music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie) rather than the spectacle. (I’m told the Broadway/touring sets often overpowered characters, story, and song, though I’d love to have seen how the house quite literally fell into ruin at the end of Act One at the Ahmanson.)

With Kirsten Chandler once again revealing herself a director with a vision (and a particular gift for putting things together in 25-hours), MTG’s Grey Gardens is yet another example of how close-to-fully-staged a so-called “staged reading” can be with a gifted director at the helm and musical theater artists who epitomize the term “quick study.”

Still, only a handful of Musical Theatre Guild readings have featured a role the size and impact of Rapier’s two for the price of one, the Forbidden Broadway franchise star commanding the stage at every turn, first as an attention-craving diva (think Shirley MacLaine as Meryl Streep’s hog-the-spotlight mom in Postcards From The Edge) and later as Big Edie’s hope-bereft victim, for whom madness provides the perfect escape from a reality too depressing to face.

Add to this the most magnificent of pipes and you have a performance that is one of the year’s best … and one that if you missed it on Monday, tough luck for you.

Fox and Barnett are heartbreakingly perfect too as the still hopeful Little Edie and the more-monstrous-than-ever Big Edie, showing off vocal gifts to match their acting chops.

  Ford aces two roles as different as night is to day and Rosenblum is the gay best friend any socialite must have at her grand piano (keys that Rosenblum tickles to perfection), with Brandon and Yacko lending expert support in dual roles and child actresses Ducusin and Petersen showing off the power pipes and poise of performers twice their age.

Music director Anthony Zediker on keyboard, Khris Kempis on bass, Nicole Marcus on drums, and Phil Moore on reeds ably take the place of a much larger Broadway pit orchestra, with Shon LeBlanc and Chelsea Marshall’s costumes taking us back to the elegant, big-shouldered early ‘40s in Act One and to the eccentricities of the no longer fashion-conscious Big and Little Edie in Act Two.

Julie Garnyé is production coordinator. Leesa Freed is production stage manager and production manager. Oliva Bates and Debra Miller are assistant stage managers.

Though it’s hard if not downright impossible to imagine Grey Gardens ever making a Musical Theatre West or La Mirada Theatre season, MTG’s one-night-only reading reveals precisely the kind of musical an adventurous 99-seat-company like Celebration Theatre might want to take on.

Minimizing sets maximizes dramatic impact where Grey Gardens is concerned, and whether or not the musical itself is your cup of tea, Musical Theatre Guild has ended its twenty-year-long residency at Glendale’s Alex Theatre on a high note indeed.

Musical Theatre Guild, The Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Ave., Glendale.
www.musicaltheatreguild.com

–Steven Stanley
February 27, 2023
Photos: Stan Chandler

Tags: Alex Theatre, Doug Wright, Los Angeles Theater Review, Michael Korie, Musical Theatre Guild, Scott Frankel