Review: GREY GARDENS, Southwark Playhouse, January 7 2016

There is much that impresses in Grey Gardens (at Southwark Playhouse until 6 February) but also much that should trouble an audience in 2016 - but probably does not. I'm still working that issue out in my mind, and will be long after this run has finished.

Reviving the 2006 Broadway musical based on the 70s cult documentary, director Thom Southerland tells the tale of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, "Little" Edie Beale, aunt and cousin to Jackie Onassis, whose glamour, fame and wealth was not enough to protect her kin from the squalor of a grand old house run to seed. Of course, any connection to the fabled Camelot of the Kennedys (the squalor of which was of a different kind to the fleas and cat piss of the Beales' home) attracted the attentions of the media who shone a light on to a pair whose lives would otherwise have played out as a couple of eccentrics of the kind most towns accommodate somewhere.

That thinness in the plotting material is most evident in Act I, an hour that is largely driven by plenty of mentions of Joe P. Kennedy (the doomed elder brother of John F.) and little Jacqueline, a teen already being inculcated by her grandfather to "marry well", showing that Americans can do "class" just as well as us Brits when the mood takes them. Because we've had plenty of exposition in the prologue - and a sight of the women's fate - this is more time spent in second gear than is strictly necessary.

Things do pick up pace in Act II, which throws the action forward from 1941 to 1973, when Little Edie is 56 and her mother 78, their days of wine and roses far behind them. Stripped back to (more or less) a two-hander, the women become more defined, the barbs sharper, the pain more acute.

The show is anchored by two splendid performances and Michael Bradley's ten piece swing band, that sets a new standard for a fringe venue like this creating the mood as much as Tom Rogers' fussy set.

Sheila Hancock, a mane of grey hair framing a face that pinches with anger and melts into self-pity as the situation demands, is horribly charismatic as the matriarch, singing along to her own gramophone recordings and dominating the space mercilessly, even when propped up in bed serving boiled corn and eating liver pate. Jenna Russell plays both Edith (Act I) and Little Edie (Act II) in their middle years, singing with rare expression the two standout, showstopper numbers, "The Revolutionary Costume For Today" (defiance) and "Another Winter in a Summer Town" (acquiescence). It's a performance that almost demands the standing ovation it got, but it's also one that teeters on the edge of caricature - indeed, crossing that line once or twice.

The principals get solid support from Rachel Anne Rayham, a pixie-like young Little Edie, and Jeremy Legat who amuses giving an excellent turn as the gay house pianist whom Edith keeps as a kind of pet to stave off the boredom as war clouds gather. Aaron Sidwell is somewhat underused as the ambitious Joe Kennedy, Little Edie's suitor, and doubles with great skill as 70s slacker Jerry, who helps a bit and steals a bit as Grey Gardens deteriorates around the women and their 52 cats in the grim early 70s.

But something troubles about this tragicomedy and it set me thinking of why I had to turn off a episode of Steptoe and Son shown recently on a satellite TV channel. The mother, for her own selfish needs, bullies the daughter to the extent that the younger woman's mental health is destabilised irrevocably - and it's horrific to watch. The drip-drip-drip of criticisms are not the acid drops of last month's batch of camp adult pantos, but daggers to the soul; Edith's ruthless sabotaging of any hope of a long-lasting relationship for Little Edie feels like a denial of human rights; the imprisoning of the middle-aged daughter in the decrepit home through emotional blackmail every bit as effective as if she were locked in a dank cellar.

I don't think audiences would watch (and certainly not laugh along heartily) if a woman's body was relentlessly battered by a person she feels powerless to resist (for all of the occasional digs Edie gets back), so I'm not sure that we should accept the same thing being done to a woman's mind. I'm not one for walkouts, but, were I not reviewing this show and been about as far from the exit as could be, I might have quietly escaped from witnessing the pain. Sometimes, one just has to look away.

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