When I heard that the team who created Grey Gardens was doing a musical based on the film Far From Heaven, I knew I had to see it! I very much enjoyed the film and I very much enjoyed Grey Gardens! Thankfully, I took advantage of a discount very early on, so I secured a ticket a long time ago. I gather that most of the run is sold out, so good for them. My seat was in the very front row, which had its pluses and minuses.
Normally, I can sit right down and write a review of a show pretty quickly. One thing I'm never short of - opinions. For some reason, I'm having a hard time constructing this one. I'm feeling ambivalence and confusion - I'm not sure if it was caused by the show itself or just my response to it. So I'll try to work things out as I write. But I have to begin off-topic...
To start, I had interesting seat neighbors. The gal on my left (well, her date was on my immediate left and she was left of him) was wearing an ENORMOUS onyx and diamond ring, that I can only imagine would've thrown the follow-spot operator for a loop if she hadn't been holding her date's hand the entire time. How the date avoided deep bloody gashes on his hand after that ring hit them, I do not know. Her date was also free with flirtatious looks - I briefly considered flirting back, thinking maybe I, too, could get an enormous ring like that. But then the couple on my right caught my ear.
The couple on my right were of a certain age. You know what age I mean. I heard the lady exclaim "Do you think this is anything like that movie Far From Heaven?" Her gentleman friend answered, "I think it's based on that movie. Julianne Moore was good in it." She said, "Oh, yes, and she has a lovely singing voice." [silence] She then continued, "Who played the husband in that? Kevin Bacon? I think Kevin Bacon. He sings, doesn't he?" [silence] Gentleman: "Uh, the movie wasn't a musical." Lady: "It wasn't? Well, I can't see how they can turn that movie into a musical anyway." And...scene.
Oh, and other audience members in the front row were intent on getting photos of the conductor and the orchestra in the pit. I'm pretty sure one of them left on their phone and recorded the show. I thought about tattling, but I was too busy writing a play in my mind about the couple next to me. :)
OK, as for the musical (any production photos you see were taken by Joan Marcus and I borrowed them from the Playwrights Horizons website. I will remove them if asked): I found it to be perfectly lovely, with smart lyrics and evocative music. Excellent performances. Beautiful costumes. But...it just didn't come together for me. It didn't touch me. Well, it did in a couple of spots, but not as a whole, I don't think. I admired it. I suppose I enjoyed it - I was engaged throughout and never felt my attention lag. But I think the slavish adherence of the libretto to the film script was part of my problem. If he was just going to replicate the exact text, what was the point of making this into a musical?
I also think part of the problem was the set. Granted, Playwrights Horizons isn't a huge space, but the set design, with the movable erecter set pieces, cramped it even further. It distanced me. With everything moving in a 'cinematic' way, I couldn't engage with the characters. At one point (and I suppose my attention must've lagged for me to notice this) I thought, gee, how many costumes does poor Kelli O'Hara have to throw on during this show?! There are a lot. All beautiful, of course, which I'm sure you can tell from the photos, but so many scenes just became too much. And the projections just didn't put me into the world. Of course, this could all be because I was in the front row and had no distance to see the stage world in its entirety. But stil...
The score is mostly sung-through, though there were some stand out songs in my mind - Cathy (Kelli O'Hara) and Raymond (Isaiah Johnson) have gorgeous duets, most especially "Miro," sung in the art gallery. "The Only One," the act-one closer, is also terrific. They're both suited to the 50s milieu, but are still theatrical and move the characters' action forward. A lot of the other songs didn't succeed at that quite as well, in my opinion. I was quite moved by Cathy's song with her young daughter, "Once Upon a Time," and found myself wishing that little actress had more to do. She was also very moving before her father's breakdown. And Frank's big confessional, "I Never Knew," was beautifully acted and sung by Steven Pasquale, though his character was a tough nut to crack. With Cathy and Raymond being portrayed as practically perfect people, it became hard to have any empathy for Frank when he ridiculed them to hide his personal torment. 
Kelli O'Hara is her usual wonderful self, giving a rich performance that could've been even richer if the libretto had taken a few more risks, in my opinion. When she sings the beautiful "Tuesdays, Thursdays," and lets out all that hidden rage, it's fantastic. A bit more of that would've been welcome. Steven Pasquale is also terrific, but maybe not given enough to do. I liked Isaiah Johnson very much, he's a lovely actor and a beautiful singer, but he didn't have much chemistry with Kelli O'Hara, so that hurt a big portion of the story for me. Nancy Anderson was tart and fun as Cathy's best friend, and she showed a lot of layers, especially during "Cathy, I'm Your Friend."
That's a bunch of blah blah blah for someone who's conflicted, yes? I don't know. I guess I just wanted to be swept away. I wanted that lush emotion and powerful repression to just surround me and take me away. And it didn't. It held me at a respectful distance and maybe stuck a little too close to that 50s repression it was trying to criticize. I wish I could put my finger on what kept me so far away from it. I was far from Far From Heaven. Gee. Symbolism, much? :)
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