Moore Steps Into Grey Gardens; Ebersole Expected to Return Jan. 3 Eve

By Kenneth Jones
03 Jan 2007

Maureen Moore
Maureen Moore

Even if Christine Ebersole's two-character performance in Grey Gardens has been hailed as something super-human, it doesn't mean the actress herself is impervious to a mundane threat — like feeling under the weather.

Tony Award winner Ebersole, acclaimed for playing matron Edith Bouvier Beale and her middle-aged daughter Little Edie, sat out the Jan. 2 performance of the new musical at Broadway's Walter Kerr. She also missed the matinee Jan. 3 due to illness, a spokesman confirmed.

Standby Maureen Moore jumped into the role(s). Ebersole is expected to return to the roles for the Wednesday evening performance.

Ebersole's only other absence from the musical since it began in spring 2006 at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons was one performance in early December 2006, when she flew to Washington, DC, to appear in the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The musical by Doug Wright (book), Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics) charts the relationship between mother and daughter socialites Edith and Edie Beale (aunt and cousin to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) as they slide from the top of the Long Island social register (in the 1940s) to the bottom of the heap (in the 1970s), ultimately living together in a squalid East Hampton mansion, Grey Gardens. The show is drawn from the 1975 documentary film, "Grey Gardens."

For her work in Grey Gardens in spring 2006, Ebersole won a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an Obie, a special citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama League's 2006 Distinguished Performance of the Year Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for playing Dorothy Brock in the revival of 42nd Street.

Visit www.greygardensthemusical.com.