"Little" Edie Beale LIVE at Reno Sweeney

Jeffrey Johnson managed to channel perfectly the wonderful decayed aristocratic weirdness of America's first reality star, the subject of the cult documentary "Grey Gardens," at 54 Below.

After the highly eccentric (to put it mildly!) mother and daughter living in the worst squalor in a condemned East Hampton mansion called Grey Gardens became national celebrities thanks to the 1975 cult documentary, Edith Bouvier Beale took her act on the road -- specifically, to the legendary Greenwich Village cabaret Reno Sweeney.

In 1978, "Little" Edie made a week's worth of appearances to an apparently adoring and celebrity-studded crowd. Being that this was a cabaret, there were a few songs, but the real entertainment was Edie being Edie.

Just before the dawn of 2014, Jeffrey Johnson recreated that performance at 54 Below. Johnson's "Little" Edie Beale LIVE at Reno Sweeney" is reminiscent of the best male impersonators of female performers; Joey Arias as Billie Holiday and John Kelly as Joni Mitchell immediately spring to mind.

The Beales were, along along with the Loud family, America's first reality stars, famous for allowing themselves to be themselves. Anyone who's seen the film "Grey Gardens" knows that Edie musical ability was somewhere south of Tiny Tim.

The audiences at Reno Sweeney, of course, couldn't have cared less. They were there to see Edie just being Edie, which, if this recreation is accurate, she did marvelously. Coming out in an orange schmatte that complete with a snood decorated with leaves, she intersperses her stream-of-consciousness patter butchering World War II by standards "Lily Marlene" and "As Time Goes By." She banters with her accompanist, David (played by Zack Ford). "Tea for Two" gets the same treatment it received in the film.

Mostly, however, in her breathless, finishing-school voice she gives the back of her hand to her family, especially her first cousin, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

The fun starts early, with a shout-out to Jackie's sister, Lee Radziwill, then married to a closeted Polish prince. From that wind-up, it's off to the races, as Edie serves up a feast of dish on the most famous American woman of the last half of the 20th century.

It's well known that Jackie, whose father was a dashing man-about-East Hampton, had tried her best to distance herself from her disreputable relatives and only bailed them out (with Lee's help) after being shamed in New York Magazine.

The real Little Edie died in 2002. She lives on, however, in the film, the Broadway musical based on it, an HBO film with Drew Barrymore playing Little Edie, and now, Johnson's loving tribute. Even if she never rose to the heights of her cousin, Edie has ascended into an iconic status that she achieved all by herself.