"Grey Gardens"

A cult classic reborn

Image: Joan Marcus

The new musical "Grey Gardens" left me pulverized.

Dark, funny, campy and poignant all at once, it won't disappoint the legions of fans of the Maysles brothers' 1975 documentary, which made fringe celebrities of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little Edie" and turned dialogue like Edie's "I'm pulverized" and "S-T-A-U-N-C-H" into cult catchphrases. But the considerable talent (much of it gay) behind "Grey Gardens," at Playwrights Horizons through April 23, took a risk in reimagining and reshaping such a beloved underground classic. "Grey Gardens" manages to be both an homage and that rarest of things on the New York stage -- an original musical that examines, fittingly, a complicated, frayed mother-and-daughter bond kept intact by popular music.

--Loren King