Grey Gardens originally struck me as a thoroughly
grotesque idea for a new musical, almost as low on the taste
level as the ill-fated attempt, a few years back, to base a
musical on the life and death of the suicidal actress Jean
Seberg. I had not been a fan of the Maysles brothers’
original documentary, which seemed to me both exploitative
and voyeuristic. It provided a glimpse into the pathetic
lives of two former socialites, “Big Edie” and “Little Edie”
Beale, members of the Bouvier family and near relations of
Jacqueline Onassis, who at the time of
filming (1974) had
become bedraggled recluses living in the cat-infested ruins
of their once grand East Hampton mansion. It took only ten
minutes for the viewer to conclude that both women were
incurably mentally ill, and then the filmmakers had nowhere
to go with the subject and simply contented themselves with
dwelling on the ladies’ degradation. I thought that had
the Beales not been related to Jackie O. their tale would
have aroused considerably less attention among cinéphiles.

Well, I was wrong. It turned out that there was a strong
emotional background to the story, a titanic mother-daughter
struggle that precipitated the Beales’ descent into madness.
This history was not touched on by the Maysles in their
smirking presentation of the pair, but the authors of the
new musical—Doug Wright (book), Michael Korie (lyrics), and
Scott Frankel (music)—went in search of it, drawing on a
diary Little Edie kept