Grey Gardens (musical)

Grey Gardens
Cover of Broadway original cast recording of Grey Gardens
Music	Scott Frankel
Lyrics	Michael Korie
Book	Doug Wright
Basis	1975 Documentary Grey Gardens
Productions	2006 Off-Broadway 2006 Broadway 2011 Melbourne 2013 Seattle 2016 London 2016 Toronto 2016 Los Angeles

Grey Gardens is a musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, based on the 1975 documentary of the same title about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie") by Albert and David Maysles. The Beales were Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin, respectively. Set at Grey Gardens, the Bouviers' mansion in East Hampton, New York, the musical tracks the progression of the two women's lives from their original status as rich and socially polished aristocrats to their eventual largely isolated existence in a home overrun by cats and cited for repeated health code violations. However, its more central purpose is to untangle the complicated dynamics of their dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship.

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.