Christine Ebersole returns to the musical that brought her one of her two Tony Awards in Grey Gardens: A 20th Anniversary Celebration, a one-night concert at Symphony Space on Thursday, November 5.
Twenty years after Grey Gardens first reached the stage, its composer and two members of its original Broadway company are back in the same room. Scott Frankel, who wrote the score, joins Ebersole for the evening, and so does Erin Davie, who created the role of Young Little Edie on Broadway. Frank DiLella, the Emmy-winning journalist, hosts, and Marc Tumminelli directs.
The format is part concert, part conversation. Ebersole revisits the performance that won her the Tony, and the three share songs from the score alongside the stories behind them. The evening runs about 90 minutes, starting at 7pm in the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, at 2537 Broadway on the Upper West Side.
The program was not built for New York. It was created for Guild Hall in East Hampton, the town where the musical is set, and played there first this past summer. The Symphony Space date brings it to Manhattan for a single night.
The musical itself, with a book by Doug Wright, music by Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, grew out of Albert and David Maysles’s 1975 documentary about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, and the decaying East Hampton mansion they shared. It was first produced in 2006, and it follows the two women from society polish to the isolation the film recorded.
VIP tickets add premium seating and an afterparty with Ebersole, Frankel and DiLella. Tickets for the November 5 performance are on our Grey Gardens: A 20th Anniversary Celebration show page.
