By Harry Haun
03 Nov 2006

Cavenaugh had an easier time of it research-wise. One character was in the phone book; the other is part of Kennedy lore. "I didn't know that much about Joe Jr.," he admitted, "but I think I would have liked him. I could see if you crossed him, you may be in for a rough ride. You wouldn't want to cross him. As for Jerry, it has been a treat to meet him and spend time with him. He's such a sweet, sweet man. He just wants to be a part of it. He just wants to connect with people. I think you see that in the documentary as well."

Cavenaugh had a quite different (albeit, still Presidential) accent his last time on Broadway when he had the title role in Urban Cowboy. That came and went pretty fast, unlike the methodically hitmaking ground work put into Grey Gardens. "It has been a great process," he allowed. "We started at the Sundance Theatre Lab close to two years ago now in December of '04, first workshopping, then of course there were other workshops before we went to Playwrights Horizons. That's another thing: It's sincerely gratifying to be part of a project from the beginning and to see it come to such fruition."

After three sold-out extensions at Playwrights Horizons, a group of productions (East of Doheny, Staunch Entertainment, Randall L. Wreghitt / Mort Swinsky, Michael Alden and Edwin W. Schloss) banded together to move Grey Gardens to Broadway — only to find there was no room in the inn, and they had to wait to a new season to open it.

Grey Gardens is a world removed from director Michael Greif's previous work (Rent, Never Gonna Dance), and he's happy to be aboard.

"I was very happy that this piece found me," he said, reversing the usual order of things. "My pal, Scott Frankel, and Doug Wright — and Michael Korie, whom I didn't know before hand — [respectively, the composer, book writer and lyricist of Grey Gardens] thought of me and sent me this script. I was immediately attracted to how sophisticated and intelligent and heartbreaking it is. I love how the first act has a musical motor that's both realistic and theatrical, but mostly I love the depth of this relationship and this need that this mother and daughter have for one another and the way they express that need."

He can't praise Ebersole and Wilson enough. "To work with these two actresses has been a great odyssey. I think they have been wonderfully inspired by the film, and they were genuinely moved to do these women—to honor these women and their memories."

The film kicks in with Act Two and starts with a showstopper, "The Revolutionary Costume for Today," in which Edie does a fashion commentary taken almost wholly from the documentary and somehow rhymed. "That's Michael Korie's brilliance," said composer Frankel, blithely passing the credit down the line, "to be able to distill the text of that and the essence of her. Night after night, Christine stops the show. I marvel at that. "I hope that some of the songs will become standards. 'Will You?' and ‘Another Winter in a Summer Town,' for instance — I hope that they have a life outside of the show. "Watching the documentary, there's almost an embarrassment of song possibilities. You're saying, 'Well, that could be a song, and that could be a song, and that could be song.' My favorite song [Wilson's, also] is 'Jerry Likes My Corn,' the way it goes from 'Hello' to heartbreak. I was actually crying when I wrote the end of that song."

Frankel can't say what's next on his docket. "I have a couple of irons in the fire, but it's too soon to say. It can't involve wacky broads. I've done my definitive wacky broad musical. Now something really different stylistically. It's got to be a great story. Stephen Sondheim taught me that. It's got to be a great story that reaches out and grabs you."

Grey Gardens reached out and grabbed him — but not at all immediately. "I'd known the documentary for many years, but it never occurred to me that it could be the basis for a musical adaptation — and then, one day, it just did. I was walking down the street, and it kinda popped into my head. It was very strange. I thought, Well, they were both such performers — they were almost exhibitionists — and the fact that they had this adoration for American popular song, I thought that maybe this could really lend itself to a musical.

"But I watched it on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and I thought, What the hell was I thinking! It is not a natural. This does not immediately come to mind as the basis for a musical. It is definitely outside the box. But maybe those are the best ideas worth doing and the ones that are more natural don't need to become musicals."

Book writer Wright, a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner (both for I Am My Own Wife), has no problem of sharing the authorship of Grey Gardens with the loose-lipped mistresses of the manor. "Those remarkable ladies largely authored the piece themselves," he admitted. "They were great iconoclasts. They were savage wits. They both boasted caustic humor. They had endless resourcefulness. They survived every day under absolutely impossible circumstances. It was a treat to walk in their shoes for a while."

For the backstory (read: Act One), he was pretty much on his own. "I did a lot of research. It is true that Big Edie's father cut her off. Little Edie was briefly engaged to Joe Kennedy, and it fell apart. All the rudimentary facts of the first act are true. They just didn't happen on one fateful afternoon. We're trying to serve dramatists and leave history to the historians. [A program note warns: The events of play are based on both fact and fiction.]

"We were so besotted with all the rich possibilities of the documentary that we crammed our original first act full of all of them. Then, seeing the play night after night at Playwrights Horizons, we realized we needed to winnow away and direct an audience's attention to what was at the core of our story, which was this profound parent-child relationship, this whole notion that a loving parent can wound with one hand and bandage with the other. That's the nature of the relationship, so a lot of the first-act work was just about getting rid of our infatuation with the period and the color of their lives and distilling it down to the core of a good mother-and-daughter story that we wanted to tell."

He took heart that Radziwell had attended the opening. "I'm thrilled she came," Wright said. "I haven't had an occasion to meet with her or talk to her about the piece, but I thought it was deeply moving she decided to attend tonight. She has always been very discreet. She never approached us directly so we never wanted to intrude on her privacy."

Wright, in fact, like the idea that both survivors of Grey Gardens had been at the play's Broadway arrival. "Jerry has been tremendous, and he has been a big advocate of ours. And, frankly, he has much readier access to the Lee Radziwells of the world than I do."

Top: Members of the Bouvier and Beale families at the opening night of Grey Gardens; Bottom: The company takes its opening night bows.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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