DIVA TALK: Chatting with Grey Gardens' Mary Louise Wilson PLUS Anderson and Brel on Disc
By Andrew Gans
10 Nov 2006
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Mary Louise Wilson in Grey Gardens
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| photo by Joan Marcus | News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.
MARY LOUISE WILSON
In her award-winning career, Mary Louise Wilson has played a remarkable array of characters including fashion editor Diana Vreeland in Full Gallop, the acclaimed play she penned with Mark Hampton but perhaps none has been quite as colorful as her current assignment. Wilson portrays the older Edith Bouvier Beale in Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie's new musical at the Walter Kerr Theatre, Grey Gardens. Based on the cult-classic Maysles documentary of the same name, Wilson is featured in the second act of the Michael Greif-directed production when both the Grey Gardens estate and the two reclusive women who inhabit it are but shadows of their former glory. The musical is a triumph for its two stars, Christine Ebersole who plays Edith in the first act and "Little" Edie in the second and Wilson, who brings perfect comic timing and a big Broadway belt to her role and makes more of songs about cake and corn than one would think humanly possible. In fact in his New York Times review, Ben Brantley wrote, "Ms. Wilson casually turns 'The Cake I Had' into a stinging study of the kind of willfully positive denial that makes old age bearable. And her song to Jerry about the corn she cooks on a hot plate becomes a strangely affecting ode to small pleasures and the vestiges of one womans misplaced maternal instincts." I recently had the chance to chat with Wilson, whose Broadway resume also boasts a terrifically moving (and Tony-nominated) performance as Fraulein Schneider in the Tony-winning revival of Cabaret as well as the Angela Lansbury revival of Gypsy, which cast Wilson as Tessie Tura and Lansbury's standby. The brief interview with the multitalented actress follows.
Question: How did the role of Edith come about for you?
Mary Louise Wilson: It started off as a workshop at Sundance in this wonderful estate in Florida. We went down there and worked on it, which was the beginning of [the process] that was two years ago.
Q: Had you seen the "Grey Gardens" documentary at that point?
Wilson: Yes, I had. I saw it [when it was] originally [released].
Q: Do you remember what your thoughts were when you first saw the film?
Wilson: I was very upset by it. I thought it was so sad and distressing, but I feel very differently about it now. After seeing it more than once, several times, these women were in some ways where they wanted to be. They had a certain relationship to each other that was valuable. They needed to be in that house, and the mother, particularly, did not notice the mess or care [about it]. She rose above it. There are many qualities about both of them that I began to really admire and like.
Q: When you were playing the show Off-Broadway, did you think that it could work on Broadway?
Wilson: I didn't know. The subject matter's odd, [and] it's a dark musical. It's not tap-dancing, so I didn't know, but it seems to be doing very well!
Q: How do you find playing in the larger space of the Walter Kerr versus the Playwright Horizons stage?
Wilson: Well, Playwrights was good because it was very intimate. It's a lovely theatre, and you really connect there with the audience. On the other hand, having more space feels great not only just technically, backstage is much easier but I think the play does better in the bigger space.
Q: I thought it worked well in the larger space, and I liked the new opening.
Wilson: Oh good. Yes, we worked on that. The creators wanted to embrace the second act more in the first act, frame it.
Q: What do you think of Edith?
Wilson: I love her! You can't play a character without loving her. I just think she's like a grand dame as though she were still in her lovely living room, serving tea and singing her songs.
Q: You started out in musicals. . .
Wilson: I did start off in them because I started off in comedy, and you couldn't do comedy without being in musicals, so I had to learn to sing.
Q: Do you have a favorite moment in the show for Edith?
Wilson: I have several. I think my favorite moment is "[Jerry Likes My] Corn."
Q: When you first were given that song, what did you think?
Wilson: I thought Scott Frankel was mad! I thought he was insane! [Laughs.] It's kind of a love affair with Jerry, and this is not unusual an older woman with a young man. No hanky-panky, just a kind of maternal doting. Jerry still exists. He's very much alive and with us and driving a cab in New York City, and he has said how much he cared about [Edith]. . . . He told a lot of stuff to the creators, who happen to live uptown and got in his cab.
Q: What do you think is the message of Grey Gardens or what does it say to you?
Wilson: It's about intimate relationships and family familial relationships, particularly between mother and daughter. It's also about loss, a great deal about loss and what that feels like.
Q: Why do you think Little Edie wasn't able to escape Grey Gardens?
Wilson: I think there were many reasons. It's hard for me to speculate. I have ideas. Young women at that time and in those social [positions] really couldn't do anything but get married. They were not helped or encouraged to go out on their own, much less into theatre. It was really not approved of. It would take an enormous amount of strength to do that. Socialites it's another world. And then her mother was this artist, and Edie was an artist. I think in some ways she couldn't break away from her mother. That's why the play is so interesting there are many different levels, and there's some mystery to it.
Q: How demanding is doing the show eight times a week?
Wilson: Well, it doesn't feel demanding when I'm doing it, but boy I'm wiped out during the day! It's the emotional [demands] maybe. Continued...
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