NEW YORK -- God bless the Broadway musical, which continues to tackle both the obvious and the arcane.

In the former category count "Mary Poppins," which simply needed the best possible British creative team and lots of money to push through to entertaining reality. I reviewed that before Thanksgiving, so today I lead off with the newest exhibit in the arcane category, "Grey Gardens," improbably based on the strange lives of two eccentric members of the American aristocracy.

For a second pair, there are two musicals already established. The obvious one is "Tarzan," which is pretty much what you'd expect but better than you'd fear. And for the arcane, we have a very delicious trifle, "The Drowsy Chaperone," which manages to have its nostalgic silliness and take it with a grain of salt, too.

	Sarah Hyland as Jackie Bouvier, Christine Ebersole as Edith Bouvier Beale, Kelsey Fowler as Lee Bouvier and Bob Stillman as Gould in "Grey Gardens." Click photo for larger image. More information "Grey Gardens" is at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 W. 48th St.; call 1-800-432-7250.

Could any play have a found-title more oxymoronically suggestive? It was the actual name of the East Hampton summer cottage (read mansion) of Edith Bouvier Beale, aunt to Jackie and Lee Bouvier, and of course it was shingled in the ostentatiously understated gray tones of the New England coast. But gardens mean color, while gray hovers between elegance and washed-out despair, neatly implying the strange life lived within.

Act 1 takes place on July 12, 1941, the expectant day when the Beales are to announce the engagement of Young Edie to Joe Kennedy Jr. We know, of course, that Joe will go off to war and be killed, but there is a more immediate disaster in store, as he wakes up to the unsuitability of the Beales to his dynastic plans, leaving young Edie trapped in the velvet claws of her indomitable diva mom.

That said, Act 1 really figures more like a comedy, or rather a Philip Barry house party with shading by Tennessee Williams. Young Jackie and Lee are a sprightly presence, and Mother Edie keeps a wryly comic piano player, sort of a domesticated Cole Porter. The black servant is supportive, and everyone hopes Beale pater will leave his mistress and show up for the party, to put on the best show for the fearsome Kennedy clan.

In the event, the absent father's place is taken by Mother Edie's disapproving father, whose best advice to the girls (Jackie is all ears) is the telling but unhelpful directive, "Marry well." The darkness comes mainly from mom, who is working out her own failed marriage and singing career on her daughter. Joe is well out of it, but Young Edie is well clear of him, too.

Nothing prepares us for the radical shift in mode in Act 2, which leaps ahead to 1973, when the two Edies are living as defiant recluses in the dilapidated mansion, overrun with cats. Nothing, that is, except for a prologue, which gives us a brief glimpse of the gray life before the relative ebullience of Act 1, and also our knowledge that the musical is based on "Grey Gardens," the famous 1975 Masles brothers film documentary.

In other words, we know the Edies are real, which provides a supplemental kick. But still, Act 2 is breathtaking in its refusal to dramatize. It is less a drama than a rich character study of rebellion mixed with lassitude, a tone poem of what seems to be despair but develops a stirring integrity.

My wife was deeply moved by the story. I can't say I was, but I was certainly moved by Christine Ebersole's dual performance as Mother Edie in Act 1 and Young Edie in Act 2. Each extreme character is daringly realized, equally engaging dislike and sympathy, and the transformation is breathtaking.

Ebersole gets good support, which is to say opposition, from Erin Davie (Young Edie) and John McMartin (her father) in Act 1 and especially from Mary Louise Wilson as the whining, manipulative, yet glowing Mother Edie in Act 2. Bob Stillman has a bitter edge as the kept musician (and he really plays), Matt Cavenaugh excels as wastrel Jerry in Act 2 (his Joe Kennedy is rather broad) and Sarah Hyland is fascinating as young Jackie, especially if, like me, you have just seen "The Secret Letters of Jackie and Marilyn."

The literate book by Doug Wright ("I Am My Own Wife," "Quills") takes second place to the varied score by Scott Frankel and the witty lyrics by Michael Korie. Michael Greif ("Rent") directs with full attention to the yin/yang of the two acts, and Pittsburgh's Jeff Calhoun handles the musical staging.

All can share the credit for how fully the songs are acted. They are almost continuous, but it hardly seems there are songs at all, so naturally do they tell this strange story.

	Danny Burstein, left, and Beth Leavel as Aldolfo and the Chaperone in "The Drowsy Chaperone." Click photo for larger image. More information "Drowsy Chaperone" is at the Marquis Theatre, in the Marriott Marquis Hotel, 1535 Broadway; call 1-800-755-4000.

'The Drowsy Chaperone'

And now for dessert. "The Drowsy Chaperone" started out as a parody of a silly 1920s musical comedy about a musical star's marriage, analogous to such other loving parodies as "Dames at Sea," "The Boy Friend" or "Little Mary Sunshine."

But it discovered its genius when it added a frame, in which this forgotten musical is being rediscovered for us by a lonely stay-at-home named, simply, Man in Chair. He puts on his treasured record and narrates "The Drowsy Chaperone," while its characters pour through his apartment walls to perform in the theater of his (and therefore our) imagination.

We never do learn his name, because, of course, he lives entirely through his enthusiasm for this entertaining relic. That anonymity suggests a melancholy undertone, reinforced by the final tableau, after the hilarity ends, of him pensive and alone.

But along the way, Man is a very effusive guide, stopping the action and spicing up his informed tour with tidbits about the fictional performers. Many tidbits are refreshingly snarky, such as his comments on today's shows ("Elton John, stop this charade") or when he introduces the aviatrix ("what we now call a lesbian").

A few bits of backstage gossip and lore may be intelligible only to the real fan, such as the fact that the hotel he sneers at for having been built on the ruins of the Morosco Theatre is actually the Marriott Marquis, the very hotel/theater complex where we are watching the show. But everyone gets most of the jokes, like his taking an intermission when we don't.

The 100 minutes fly by: Whenever the formulaic plot begins to show through the affectionate parody, the Man is there with a comic insight to get us back on track. And with his help, the musical (he never sings himself) moves quickly from high point to high point, including the star/bride's dynamic "Show Off" number, the Chaperone's catchy faux anthem, "As We Stumble Along," and the comic Latin lover's tour de farce, "I Am Aldolpho."

Man, played by Bob Martin, gets most of the best lines penned by book writers Don McKellar and that same Bob Martin. Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison provide a dozen songs for a musical cast of 13 (plus small ensemble), which is rich with plummy caricatures: Georgia Engel's tottering hostess, Edward Hibbert's lemon-sucking butler, Lenny Wolpe's hair-tearing producer and Danny Burstein's absolutely baroque lover. The two richest performances are Sutton Foster's gymnastic, neon-bright bride/star and Beth Leavel's grande dame chaperone.

How will "Forbidden Broadway" parody such a parody? Doubtless it will find a way.

	Joan Marcus Jenn Gambatese as Jane and Josh Strickland as you know who in the musical "Tarzan." Click photo for larger image. More information "Tarzan" is at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Broadway and 53rd; call 1-800-755-4000.

'Tarzan'

Doubtless this is one of the musicals that Man in Chair would sneer at, as some of the New York critics have done. But with my expectations lowered, I was pleasantly surprised.

It's no sneer to say that the best of it is the staging, if that's what you call an acrobatic airborne ballet of humans playing the band of gorillas. (A species unknown to science, I assume.) The basic set is a thick jungle of green vines out of which apes, leopards and other antagonists can suddenly appear, and the flying is carried out by a combination of the usual rigging and bungee cords (aerial design by Pichon Baldinu, choreography by Meryl Tankard).

Given the primacy of the visual, it's not entirely a surprise that Bob Crowley, "Tarzan's" busy set and costume designer (he also designed "Mary Poppins"), directs, as well -- apparently for the first time.

He opens the show with a designer's impressive set piece, a huge, rolling image of a sailing ship which might have made me seasick if I had watched it much longer, followed by a giant storm and shipwreck, in which we see Tarzan's parents underwater, swimming upward. Suddenly we're looking straight down at them, thrown on the beach!

Don't arrive late.

The apes appear and in a twinkling -- don't blink -- Kala's baby is snatched by a leopard with scary red eyes. The leopards soon get Tarzan's parents, too, although the gory details are kept offstage , leaving Kala to find the human baby, name him Tarzan ("white skin" according to Edgar Rice Burroughs) and convince head gorilla Kerchak to let her raise him for a while.

Suddenly Tarzan is about 10 and meets Terk, the obligatory comic friend, a reminder that this is a Disney production, with David Henry Hwang's book based on the Disney movie as much as on Burroughs' 1912 novel. Soon enough Tarzan is fully grown, and by the end of Act 1, Jane arrives with her professor father and a Texan game hunter who is clearly going to be trouble.

Jane is English and delightful. She encounters Africa as an Eden of marvelous plants and animals, and when she finds herself trussed up in a giant spider's web, she gamely sings "All Things Bright and Beautiful" -- even giant spiders about to reduce you to a meal.

That's a clue to the musical's contemporary ethic. It may be early in the 20th century, but Jane and her father have all the environmentally correct attitudes of the Sierra Club. This Jane is a naturalist and botanist, practically Jane Goodall, fully prepared to take on the education of a noble savage.

The story is completely predictable, but there's no denying its primal grip. On the one hand, Tarzan and Jane are Adam and Eve; on the other, they are Romeo and Juliet, bound to suffer from tribal conflict. But on the whole issue of adoption ("Tarzan" is one of the definitive modern adoption narratives), the story is enlightened. When Tarzan learns about his "real" (biological) parents, he does not deny his adopted mother. Faced with this, the professor wisely asks, " Do you know of any families who aren't real?"

Phil Collins' songs provide an ample aural setting, but I don't remember them as I do the visual. It's hard to act while grunting and dragging your knuckles, but the fine Shuler Hensley is compelling as Kerchak. The young Tarzan I saw (there are two) was lithe and cute, but in Josh Strickland, the older Tarzan, the creators settled for an engaging, active presence at the expense of any acting. Jenn Gambatese's feisty Jane makes up for her man's shortfall, as women so often do.

OK, you wouldn't call it art, but "Tarzan" certainly displays great artifice. The human villains are negligible and at 21/3 hours, it sometimes drags, but the story still reminds us this earth is ours only to share.