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THEATER REVIEW — There's something strangely compelling about watching the mighty fall. Like a car wreck to rubberneckers, one can't help a morbid curiousity.

So a play like "Grey Gardens," the story of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis' aunt and cousin who let their posh Long Island estate fall into ruin while still living there, holds a lot of potential.

Unfortunately, the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati's season opener has too much in common with the proverbial car wreck. Even the appearance of a Kennedy character can't elevate it.

"Grey Gardens" is all concept and no substance. There are shadows of a story, but no plot to speak of, and, for the most part, characters are played to type and the music seems uninspired, or perhaps under-rehearsed, working best when there's humorous content, such as when Big Edie leads her young nieces Jackie (the future First Lady) and Lee in a minstrel show piece, "Hominy Grits." Otherwise, there's just a lot of emoting and no depth.

The story spans nearly 40 years, opening in 1941 on the day that Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale (Neva Rae Powers) throws an engagement party for her daughter, Edith "Little Edie" Beal (Ashley Kate Adams) and Joseph Kennedy Jr. The second act takes place in 1973 after the local board of health has declared their mansion unfit for human occupation, with Powers now playing Little Edie and Dale Hodges as the aging Big Edie.

The second act tends to work better as we get a better sense of the relationship between the Edies without all the flutter of social activity, but we're still at a loss as to exactly how they got to such a decrepit state. There's a lot of direct-address to the audience, inexplicably lacking in the first act, that helps drive the two main characters, but there are odd moments, such as the appearance of Norman Vincent Peale in a fantasy sequence, that keeps the action veering in weird directions. Even so, Hodges and Powers have a better dynamic as the Edies than Powers and Adams do in the first act.

At times, "Grey Gardens" seems like a reprise of last year's ETC offering of "Souvenir," with Powers reprising the role of Florence Foster Jenkins, the singing socialite with an ear of tin, with Scott Wooley as her wise-cracking gay accompanist. In the opening scenes of "Grey Gardens," Powers plays Big Edie, the aunt, planning to sing at the engagement party, but the family talks her out of it. But there's only so much off-key singing one can take, purposeful or not.

The supporting cast is unusually lackluster for ETC. Charlie Clark plays Joe Kennedy in the first act without much conviction, and fares better in the second act as Jerry, a neighborhood nitwit who comes around to help out with flea powder. Greg Hudson turns in a community-theater-level performance as one of the Bouvier patriarchs in the first act. Wooley, who was brilliant in "Souvenir," seems bored.

how to go

WHAT: "Grey Gardens" by Doug Wright, Michael Korie and Scott Frankel

WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati

WHEN: Through Sept. 28

COST: $29-$32

MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; www.cincyetc.com