Grey Gardens

RECLUSE ABANDON Wilson, left, and Ebersole play Long Island hermits.

Photograph: Joan Marcus

The abundantly satisfying musical Grey Gardens is the story of a haunted house: a ruined East Hampton mansion invisibly filled with strangled dreams of love, art and happiness. The sweet smell of decay hovers over the show’s second act, closely based on a 1975 cult documentary about Edith Bouvier Beale and Little Edie Beale, two deranged relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis; in a contrast evocative of Stephen Sondheim’s great Follies, the first act shows the same house and its occupants three decades earlier, in their doomed gilded glory.

Grey Gardens feels richer, deeper and more complete on Broadway than it did in its Off Broadway version earlier this year; the flavorfulness of Doug Wright’s revised book, the agility of Michael Korie’s lyrics and the classic tunefulness of Scott Frankel’s music combine to craft a jewel box of a musical. The phenomenal Christine Ebersole still anchors both halves of the story, playing the self-enamored socialite Edith in Act I and the disturbed nonconformist Edie in Act II; with this stunningly wide-ranging performance, Ebersole officially joins the musical-theater pantheon. But with the winning Erin Davie taking on the role of Edie in the first half, and Mary Louise Wilson spinning out magnificent webs of maternal entrapment in the second, Grey Gardens is more than just a double star turn for Ebersole. The show offers a moving portrait of motherhood and independence in a compromised world, as seen through the unluckily broken mirror of two unique and fascinating women: Follies à deux. — Adam Feldman