Twenty years ago today, Grey Gardens opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Three nights from now its leading lady and its composer mark the date with a single evening of the score at Symphony Space.
The musical came to Broadway by the longer road. Its book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie were first heard at Playwrights Horizons, where the show opened Off-Broadway on February 10, 2006 and played until April 30. Revised for the transfer, it opened at the Walter Kerr on November 2 under the direction of Michael Greif.
The source was Albert and David Maysles’s 1975 documentary about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, living out their later years in a decaying East Hampton house. The stage version divided the story with some daring. Its first act, set in 1941, imagined the household at its social height; its second, set 32 years later in 1973, stayed close to the women the cameras actually found.
The casting made that structure work. Christine Ebersole played Big Edie before intermission and Little Edie after it, while Mary Louise Wilson took over the mother in the second act, and Erin Davie created the role of Young Little Edie. The production drew 10 Tony nominations in 2007 and won three, among them Ebersole for Best Actress in a Musical and Wilson for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
The Broadway run itself was shorter than the show’s standing would suggest: it closed on July 29, 2007, after 307 performances and 33 previews. The reputation, built largely on those two performances, has outlasted it by some distance.
That is what the anniversary evening is about. On Thursday, November 5, Ebersole, Frankel and Davie reunite for Grey Gardens: A 20th Anniversary Celebration in the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, with Frank DiLella hosting and Marc Tumminelli directing. We set out the full program when it was announced, in our earlier report on the concert.
Tickets for the November 5 performance are on our Grey Gardens: A 20th Anniversary Celebration show page.
