Grey Gardens (musical)

The first act depicts the characters in their heyday and is a speculative take on what their lives might have been like when they were younger, when Little Edie was 24 and Big Edie 47. The second act is set 32 years later in 1973 at the decaying Grey Gardens estate and hews closely to the Maysles Brothers' documentary in its portrayal of them in their later years, when Little Edie is 56 and Big Edie is 79. While the first act is almost entirely fictional (the central event, the engagement between Little Edie and Joseph Kennedy, never happened), the second act takes much of its dialogue and action directly from the film. The same actress who plays Big Edie in the first act plays Little Edie in the second act.

The musical opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 10, 2006, and ran through April 30, 2006. Directed by Michael Greif with choreography by Jeff Calhoun, it starred Christine Ebersole, Mary Louise Wilson, and John McMartin. It received mixed reviews, but attracted particularly good reviews for Ebersole and Wilson. It earned five Lucille Lortel Award nominations and twelve Drama Desk Award nominations.

Christine Ebersole received the Obie Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, a special citation from the New York Drama Critics' Circle, and the Drama League Award for Performance of the Year (2006) for her dual roles of Edith and Edie Beale in the off-Broadway production.[1]

Marquee for the original Broadway production at The Walter Kerr Theatre in 2006

The show opened, with revisions, on Broadway on November 2, 2006, at the Walter Kerr Theatre and closed on July 29, 2007, after 307 performances and 33 previews. The production was nominated for 10 Tony Awards in 2007, winning three, including awards for both Ebersole and Wilson in leading and featured actress categories, respectively.

According to an article in Playbill on November 21, 2007, composer Scott Frankel said there were no plans for a national tour based on the 2006-07 Broadway production, but "Dramatists Play Service, Inc. is handling the show's licensing to stock, amateur, university and resident theatres. Independent productions, which started playing in those markets in 2008."[2]

In the spring of 2013, a three-month run was mounted in Seattle as a co-production between the 5th Avenue Theatre and ACT Theatre, starring Patti Cohenour and Suzy Hunt.

In August 2015, a three-week production was held at the Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor, New York. Directed by Michael Wilson, the cast featured Betty Buckley, Rachel York, Matt Doyle (Joe/Jerry), Simon Jones (Major/Peale), Howard McGillin (George Gould Strong), James Harkness (Brooks Sr./Brooks Jr.), Sarah Hunt (Young Edie), Gracie Beardsley (Lee), and Dakota Quackenbush.[3][4] Buckley and York star in a production at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, California, again directed by Michael Wilson in July and August 2016.[5]

≈ denotes new songs written for the Broadway production.[11]

Songs omitted in the Broadway production: "Toyland", "Body Beautiful Beale", "Being Bouvier", "Better Fall Out of Love", "Tomorrow's Woman", "Peas in a Pod" (Reprise).

The Broadway production was received enthusiastically by critics. Time magazine named Grey Gardens the best show to come out in 2006.[12] In reviewing the off-Broadway production, Ben Brantley, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote "A blend of gentle compassion and acute observation, Ms. Ebersole's performance is one of the most gorgeous ever to grace a musical." However, he also noted that the musical "tilts perilously toward cheap celebrity camp". With a "very long and finally tedious first act".[13] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the musical "brings to mind two phrases seldom linked nowadays: 'Broadway musical' and 'artistic integrity' the songs, with music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, sustain a level of refined language and psychological detail as elevated as Stephen Sondheim's. The score is a meticulously fashioned piece of musical theater that gains in depth the more you listen to it."[14][15]

The Off-Broadway cast album was released on August 22, 2006.[11]

The Original Broadway Cast album was released on March 27, 2007, through PS Classics.[11][16] It was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.

• Grey Gardens, the Musical
• Production: Grey Gardens Working in the Theatre video from the American Theatre Wing, November 2006

• ​Grey Gardens​ at the Internet Broadway Database
• ​Grey Gardens​ at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• GREY GARDENS: From East Hampton to Broadway site for Independent Lens on PBS
• East of Doheny, production company
• Grey Gardens Online Information Website