The Great Escape Stage Company is taking on a complicated musical with “Grey Gardens.”

“Grey Gardens” centers around two real people, though the autobiographical elements are ever servants to the plot and theme. Edith Bouvier Beale and Edie Bouvier Beale are the aunt and cousin respectively of Jackie Kennedy. They were eccentric characters who went from society paragons to reclusive women who lived with 52 cats in squalor in what was once the 28-room gorgeous mansion.

The musical takes place in two separate eras – in 1941 and in 1973. In the first scene, the mother-daughter pair are, like the opening song suggests, “The Girl Who Has Everything.” While there are hints about the darker sides of their personality, about how they are different in ways that others frown upon, they are clearly living in luxury and fully participating in society. The occasion is the day of Little Edie’s engagement party to Joe Kennedy Jr. This act is speculative and plays loose with the facts in order to show the dysfunction between mother and daughter and the height from which they fall.

The second act takes place when they are at polar opposites from their luxurious life in the Hamptons. Grey Garden has fallen into disrepair and has been condemned by the county. Likewise, the two women have also fallen into disrepair, living the lives of hermits surrounded by cats, raccoons and fleas. Most of this act is based on the 1975 documentary done about the two women called “Grey Gardens.”

The Great Escape has undertaken the challenge of portraying these complex women and their intense mental states. It is a musical that frequently makes the audience uncomfortable, because these are women who suffer for being who they are, and who manage to damage each other even while turning to each other for refuge.

Debbie Culver faces the greatest challenge in this production, performing the role of Edith in the first act and Little Edie in the second. In both acts she embraces the ability to portray powerful women. The second act is particularly poignant, as she shows the loss of faculties and the degradation of Little Edie’s mental abilities. Her performance of “Revolutionary Costume for Today” reveals more about the mental state of Little Edie and how far she’s fallen than words could ever do. Culver did an amazing job with that song, switching with ease between styles and showing the mental fog that the character experiences.

What makes “Grey Gardens” difficult to watch is that Culver’s characters are not professional singers. Director Randy Lake adds verisimilitude to the overall story by having them sometimes screech and reveal why the characters are amateur singers who embarrass the more proper members of the family with their performances. But the music is sometimes loud and screechy and not the least bit pleasant to listen to. The audience must brace itself for singing that is overly loud and lacking in clear tone.

Vanessa Banister plays Little Edie in the first act and then joins the ensemble in the second act. Her Little Edie is brash, and it is easy to see the seeds of who she becomes in the second act. Bannister has a commanding stage presence and is easily Culver’s equal when they clash.

Playing the dual roles of Joe Kennedy and Jerry, David Lussier found ways to look the part for two opposite characters. He’s charming as the young Kennedy with all the poise and elegance one expects from a Kennedy. He also makes it clear that Little Edie will have no more freedom with him than she does in her current circumstances. Lussier then returns as the high schooler Jerry who has little-to-no social graces and whose intelligence lies in his hands and his ability to fix things.

The remaining cast members also brought great commitment to their roles: Rick McKire as the servant Brooks, and later, the afro-bedecked groundskeeper; Robert Doyle as the piano accompanist and composer who lives in Grey Gardens to help provide a constant stream of music for Edith; John Sherwood as Major Bouvier, the father and grandfather to Edith and Edie; and the two young ladies and cousins, Grace Lunger as the poised Jackie and Emma Avroy as the tomboyish Lee.

The two younger actors were especially entertaining in the number “Marry Well,” when they and Banister are reacting to the grandfather’s exhortations that they find a wealthy and upper class husband. Lunger and Avroy showed they had a delightful talent to match their adult counterparts.

In the second act, this ensemble fills in with a variety of Carole Bolthouse’s costumes to bring to life the fantasies of the two Beale women. In one wonderful scene, they play the cats who roam the mansion and sing about the view of Grey Garden’s from a feline eye. They are greatly entertaining in the way they move as cats and surround the two women who pet and coddle them.

The Great Escape stage is small and the set was still being completed on opening night, two factors which added challenges to the dancing and choreography. While the dancing was energetic and filled the stage, on opening night it seemed too-often stilted and uncertain, as if the dancers were not yet comfortable with their choreography or what they were supposed to be doing.

“Grey Gardens” was frequently loud and brash, making it difficult to ever connect closely with the characters or their motivations. It is only in moments of great loss or pain that the scene quiets and the characters evoke empathy. The production shines in these moments and in its moments of comedy, but makes for discomfort in the spans between the moments.