Grey Gossip

Long before there was Gossip Girl, the trashtastic TV show about overprivileged social-climbing teenagers on the Upper East Side, there was the real-life pair of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, relatives of Jackie O and fixtures of the New York social circuit in the 1940s. Sounds grand, but the opening speech of the musical Grey Gardens sums up the infamous waning years of their lives:

“In a statement released today, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis confirmed that her eighty-year-old aunt, Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale, and her adult daughter, Edie, are living in squalid conditions in an East Hampton estate known as Grey Gardens. The house that once played host to Howard Hughes and the Rockefellers is now a refuge for fifty-two stray cats, a few rabid raccoons, and its two reclusive inhabitants, all living in an environment the Health Department calls ‘unfit for human habitation.’ Mrs. Onassis described the situation as a ‘private family matter.’ ”

Yikes.

So how did these two doyennes from American royalty devolve to American freak show? This is the story of Grey Gardens, the hit musical with a toe-tapping take on the lives of Big Edie and Little Edie that transports the audience back to a decade of opulence, humor, and, ultimately, the women’s descent into splendid squalor.

Coproduced by the Ordway and Park Square Theatre, the cast includes Wendy Lehr as the octogenarian Edie, while the charismatic chanteuse Christina Baldwin transitions seamlessly from debutante to eccentric outcast in the role of Little Edie, making this musical the show to see this spring. March 17–May 17. Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, 651-224-4222