Grey Gardens, a bizarre American musical, with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michel Korrie, takes its inspiration from a 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, which had (and still has) something of a cult following; no doubt because the two leading odd-ball characters were US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s aunt and niece.
Mother and daughter do not get on. The first act is set in East Hampton, Long Island in 1941 and is fiction. The daughter is engaged to be married to Joseph F Kennedy, JFK’s elder brother. The second act takes place 23 years later and the mother, who is now 79 and daughter who is now 56, are rich recluses living in disgusting squalor.
Jenna Russell plays the 47-year-old mother in Act One and the 56-year-old daughter in Act Two, two bravura outré performances. She has the knock-out camp song, “The Revolutionary Costume for Today.”