Playwrights Horizons Adds Three World Premieres to New Season

Playwrights Horizons has announced three world premiere productions for their 2005-2006 season. The company will present the musical Grey Gardens, starring Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson, Sarah Schulman's Manic Flight Reaction and David Marshall Grant's Pen with J. Smith-Cameron.

The musical Grey Gardens is based on the 1976 documentary film based on the lives of eccentric mother and daughter Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale. The pair the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, but they became East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Facing an uncertain future, Edith and her adult daughter, "Little" Edie, are forced to revisit their storied past and come to terms with it--for better and for worse. The tuner features a book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. Michael Greif is set to direct the tuner, which has not yet announced dates.

Manic Flight Reaction, directed by Trip Cullman, is scheduled to begin performances at Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater on October 13. The play centers on a middle-aged professor who must confront the demons of her idealistic past when her daughter learns one of her mother's past liaisons is the wife of the leading presidential candidate.

In Pen, a controlling mother Smith-Cameron, confined to a wheelchair, holds tightly to her son by influencing his enrollment in a nearby college, while her ex-husband tries to spring the boy loose. Backed into a corner, the young man makes a choice that unleashes a series of mysterious events, forcing a broken family to confront its unresolved wounds. Will Frears will direct this play, which is scheduled to begin performances at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on March 23.

These works join previously announced season entries: James Lapine's Fran's Bed with Mia Farrow who is now officially confirmed to star, Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon and Keith Bunin's The Busy World Is Hushed.