The shadowy show has a book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife), music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie (Zhivago) and is based on the documentary film "Grey Gardens," a Maysles Brothers Films Inc. Production.
Michael Greif (Rent) directs the reading presentations and is slated (as previously announced) to helm the Off-Broadway staging in February 2006. Involved in the Oct. 5-6 airings are the previously-announced stars Mary Louise Wilson and Christine Ebersole (as Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little" Edie), as well as Jennifer Laura Thompson (Urinetown, Wicked), Matt Cavenaugh (Urban Cowboy), John McMartin (Sweet Charity, Follies), Bob Stillman (Dirty Blonde), Michael Potts, Sarah Hyland and Audrey Twitchell.
Full casting for 2006 has not been announced.
The presentations feature Jeff Calhoun as choreographer and Eric Stern as musical director. The industry presentations will offer the entire book and score of the musical and is by invitation only.
Previews begin Feb. 3, 2006 at PH's Mainstage on West 42nd Street. Opening is Feb. 23. The limited engagement continues to March 12. Here's how Playwrights Horizons describes the show: "Welcome to Grey Gardens, a bold and exciting new musical. Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, the deliciously eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are now East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Facing an uncertain future, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter, 'Little' Edie, are forced to revisit their storied past and come to terms with it — for better, and for worse."