By Harry Haun
03 Nov 2006

Lee Radziwill and Jerry Torre returned to Grey Gardens Nov. 2, and, whatever the place was to them in their respective and widely separated youths, it was never a musical.

Now, it is — a bittersweet and haunted one, to be sure — having evolved from mansion to movie to musical. And it's still evolving. Albert Maysles, who shot the celebrated 1975 documentary with his late brother David, was wheeling his camera around the Walter Kerr Theatre and after-party at The Central Park Boathouse at the happy chaos of opening night, filming his latest — a documentary on the making of the musical of his film.

Everyone who inhabits this musical Grey Gardens is a ghost now, save for Radziwill and Torre. Played by Kelsey Fowler, she is seen as an eight-year-old in 1941, visiting with her older sister Jackie Bouvier [Kennedy Onassis] the elegant East Hampton estate of their aunt, Edith Bouvier Beale, and cousin "Little" Edie Beale. Christine Ebersole, in last season's most honored Off-Broadway performance(s), is Edith in the first act and "Edie" in the second; Broadway-debut Erin Davie is her daughter in Act One, and a terrific Mary Louise Wilson is her mother in Act Two. A quantum leap of 32 years separates the two acts. With Edith deprived of funds from father and ex alike, her lavish home has turned into "a 28-room kitty-litterbox," overrun by 52 cats and layered in filth. Torre is a teenager on a summer job who wanders into the Maysles picture and befriends Edith; he's played by Matt Cavenaugh, who doubles in Act One as Joe Kennedy Jr., Edie's intended.

"How do I feel about it? Seeing somebody play me is, like, 'Okay, bring it up a few notches,'" Torre gushed with unguarded enthusiasm. "I loved it. It's a trip down memory lane. I'm overwhelmed. Such an honor." He remembered well the day he had his lasting brush with fame. "I recall Albert Maysles showing up with his brother at the mansion. I was just a kid. I didn't know what to say to him. There was no script. I thought they were film students from New York University. I didn't think they were really professionals."

Torre's chosen profession — it chose him, he said — is cab driver. "I drive a Yellow Cab in Manhattan three days a week. I've been doing it for 19 years. I'm about ready to retire."

The current cabbie and the former princess crossed paths after the show. "Lee looks great. She's a charming woman. She seemed very happy, and she seemed to like the show. We greeted each other, but didn't say much. She was in a rush. I hadn't see her 31 years. I remember meeting Lee on the front lawn of Grey Gardens in 1975. I mixed her a drink and brought it down to her on the front lawn. We discussed the renovations of the mansion."

Torre's attendance was always a given, and his name was listed on the Photo Tip sheet, but the collective corporate jaws of The Publicity Office dropped when Radziwell made a last-minute regal sweep into the Walter Kerr. She obliged the photographers but tried to make as little fuss as possible. She saw the show Off-Broadway — or at least, according to the columns, Act One — so her opening-night appearance threw one and all for a loop.

How, then, did it happen? It seems she is a close friend of William Ivey Long, the Tony-winning (for The Producers) costume designer who predictably has a field day giving Edie Beale her designer dues, imitating her ragtag-with-flair fashion sense. He persuaded her to give the whole show a shot — and he told no one she was coming. "Aren't I naughty?" Peck's Bad Boy told publicists. An opening night party would be pushing it.

First-nighters not in the play included Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell, Anne Jeffreys (still Topper in the untouched-by-time division), Denis Leary, Billy Stritch, Kyan Douglas, Margo Martindale, Lucy Simon, Dana Delaney, M. Butterfly Tony winner B.D. Wong, Hairspray Tony winners Harvey Fierstein and Dick Latessa, The Times' cabaret and screen critic Stephen Holden, Nora Ephron, Darren Starr, Dr. Ava Shamban, Diane McInerney, Brana Wolf, Legally Blonde's choreographer-turning-director Jerry Mitchell with Grey Gardens' assistant choreographer Jodi Moccia (in a dazzling dress he bought her a decade ago), Bill C. Jones, Laura Belle Bundy, Denny Dillon (now an artist as well as an actress with her own gallery in Stone Ridge, NY), Cornelia Guest, producers Daryl Roth and Chase Mishkin, director David Leveaux (on a break from L.A. huddles with Robbie Robertson about an original musical), Spring Awakening composer Duncan Sheik, Awake and Sing's Lauren Ambrose, Dirty Blonde Claudia Shear, Irish Rep's high priestess Charlotte Moore, designers Kenny Ortega, Michael Kors and Arnold Scassi, John Patrick Shanley, a redheaded Christiane Noll, Regrets Only director Christopher Ashley, biographer Charlotte Chandler and assorted Beales and Bouviers.

The suggested dress code for the evening — Eccentric Edie would have approved — was "uniquely festive, with red shoes preferred." This, because it was Thursday, and one of the lines in the play has Edie railing against the petty rules of hoity-toity East Hampton: "They can get you for wearing red shoes on a Thursday." Like a number of lines in the show, it was lifted exact and intact from the lips of the real Beales in the Maysles movie.

A fleet of Hampton Jitney buses whisked the above to the lavish after-party up in Central Park at The Boathouse. (Getting back to civilization was less glamorous: trolleys hauled passengers back to Fifth Avenue and expelled them en masse, creating nasty taxi wars.)

It was a nippy night for The Boathouse, although most revelers never noticed. Stars and the press did, having to converge on the open-air (non-enclosed) terrace for interviews.

Ebersole arrived late, like A Star, and shivering like a mortal one. She quickly maneuvered the hugs and kisses closer to the raging fireplaces. Yes, she said, she felt great. "It felt like a triumph. I did it for Edie and the audience. It's such a special night."

The Washington Post's Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, current owners of Grey Gardens, were at the front of the receiving line. He presented her as an opening-night gift a copy of his book, "Conversations with Kennedy," and she shrieked with delight over the inscription.

Mary Louise Wilson's red gossamer was no shield from the weather so, as soon as the television interviewers had their way with her, she made a bee-line for warmer climes to meet the print. The secret of her success at playing the imperiously impoverished Edith: "She doesn't notice her surroundings. She might as well be sitting in a tea room with the finest settings you can find. 'Where are the servants?'" And that's the way she plays it.

The third face of Edie — Young Edie of the first act — is a brand new face for Broadway: Erin Davie.. What did she learn from this debut ride to Broadway? "I learned I could do it," she replied simply. "When you're a struggling actor, you're, like, 'Can I really do Broadway? Am I good enough to do that?' And you know what? Everybody —even the best actors — they're just like you, and they're human, and it's all a collaborative process.

"This was pretty daunting, but these are the coolest people — on and off stage — and they were so welcoming to me. It's a treat all around. I am learning so much every night."

Another debut is marked by Sarah Hyland, blissed out about playing Jackie O. at age 12. Entre nous, she admitted she's turning 16 in a couple of weeks and goes to Professional Performing Arts School, which, as luck has it, is a block from the Kerr.

Broadway vet John McMartin also get dual roles — first as a Bouvier then as a Peale (i.e., Norman Vincent Peale doing a gospel-thumping "Choose to Be Happy"); he rules the roost in the first act as the daft but tyrannical patriarch J.V. "Major" Bouvier. "A Beale came up to me and said, 'You can play my grandfather anytime," he beamed.

One of the pillars of sanity in Grey Gardens is Michael Potts, playing father-and-son servants both named Brooks. "I think the role speaks for the incredible sophistication of servants in this type of household," he said. "They know everything that's going on, and they learn who these people are — their personalities, and how to meet their needs. I think he finds them absolutely amusing and kinda wonderful — despite their little foibles."

Bob Stillman, who played the men in the life of Mae West in Dirty Blonde, plays the one man in the life of Edith Beale, a gay housepet pianist named George Gould Strong. "We knew nothing about him except for what's mentioned in the movie," said Stillman. "Then, recently, some people turned up who are the great nephews of George Gould Strong. Their father, who is the nephew, lives out in East Hampton and is still alive, but he's reluctant to get involved with us or anybody involved doing the movie [a nonmusical "Grey Gardens" feature is in preproduction]. But the great-nephews came to see the show and want to share some of his poetry and diaries. George Gould Strong became a Jehovah's Witness and died of a bleeding ulcers. I asked his relatives, 'Was that brought on by his drinking?' And this guy said, 'I dunno, but it wouldn't be out of character.'" Continued...

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