Unreal world
Art doesn't imitate life in the new musical Grey Gardens
By Raven Snook

RECLUSE ABANDON As the eccentric Little Edie, Ebersole hides from the world.
Musicals based on movies are old hat-just look at four of the last five Tony Award winners: The Producers, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hairspray and Spamalot. But a musical inspired by a documentary? That's uncharted territory. Of course, Grey Gardens isn't your average nonfiction film. A tour de force of cinema vérité shot by the acclaimed Maysles brothers (Gimme Shelter), this 1975 film depicts the squalid existence of fiftysome-thing Little Edie and her septuagenarian mother Edith Beale-Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis's cousin and aunt, respectively-as they bicker away their lives in a decrepit East Hampton mansion surrounded by 52 cats, a couple of wild raccoons and memories of a rosier past. Although the movie is a campy cult favorite that has inspired its own documentary, Ghosts of Grey Gardens, its poignant, plotless form wouldn't seem to lend itself to the stage. At least that's what Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife author Doug Wright thought when composer Scott Frankel suggested the idea.

“My initial response was, This just can't be done,” Wright recalls. “These two women were endlessly fascinating in large part because they were real. The first thing you sacrifice in adapting this film is its greatest asset, its verisimilitude, since the theater is entirely built on artifice.” Yet despite his reservations, Wright's interest was piqued, and after a little more prompting from Frankel and his collaborator, lyricist Michael Korie, he signed on to the project in 2002.
From the outset, the trio knew that simply putting the film onstage and plunking in songs wasn't going to work. After all, not a lot happens in Grey Gardens. The ladies fight, reminisce, warble a handful of old-time standards and eat corn on the cob within the confines of their shared bedroom. It's the specter of what occurred in the decades before the Maysles' cameras starting rolling that is so mesmerizing. In the early '40s, Little Edie was a model and society girl who moved to New York City with visions of a bright future. For some unknown reason, she returned to her mother's fold in the '50s, never to leave again. Since the Beales constantly contradict one another, few facts can be gleaned from their addled conversations. But this gave Wright, Frankel and Korie room to invent. “We don't get an enormous amount about their histories in the movie,” Wright says. “There's so much ambiguity in terms of what happened in their past. When history fails us, that's always an opportunity for dramatic conjecture.”
To that end, Act I of Grey Gardens is set in 1941 on the eve of Little Edie's engagement party to Joe Kennedy. Preparing to host the cream of Northeast society, Little Edie (Sara Gettelfinger) and Edith (the phenomenal Christine Ebersole) are positively radiant-if also competitive and catty. As the night wears on, their resentment and recriminations boil over, serving as the subtext for Act II, which, like the documentary, takes place in the early '70s. Here Ebersole plays the middle-aged Little Edie while Mary Louise Wilson tackles the maternal role. The mysterious 30-year gap passes silently during intermission. “We haven't answered all the questions from the movie,” Korie says. “In fact, I think we've raised new ones. Our musical shows the best of times and the worst of times.”
Even at their lowest points, the Beales comforted themselves with music. Throughout the movie, they burst into song (always arguing over who has the better voice). “They were both such exhibitionists and had such an obvious love for show business,” Frankel says. “Putting them in a musical seemed like a natural.” So while the authors did stray from the source material, Wright believes they remained true to the essence of the film. “Grey Gardens is a love story between a mother and daughter.”
Perhaps the project isn't that off-beat after all. “There is a really rich tradition of bio musicals: Annie Get Your Gun; Fiorello!; and how about Gypsy?” Wright says, citing another musical about a famously dysfunctional parent-child relationship. “And besides, every good musical needs a diva,” he adds, giggling. “Our show has two!”
Grey Gardens is at Playwrights Horizons. See Off Broadway.