. -BEAUTIES .. , Christine Ebersole blooms in 'Grey Gardens' BY MICHAEL GILTZ hen actress Christine Ebersole was a young girl growing up in Wmnetka, Ill., she would sneak off by herself to Sacred Heart Church during lunch break at school. "I would stop in the Catholic church," says Ebersole, who was raised a Unitarian but sometimes went to the church with her neighbors. "No one would be there and I'd look around and I'd start singing in Latin, just what 1 remembered from the Mass.</p><p> It wasn't to show off.</p><p> It was just to connect." Now theatergoers are headed to "Grey Gardens" to worship Ebersole .</p><p> Adapted from the cult 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, the musical, opening Thursday at the Walter Kerr Theater, tells the story of Edith "Big Edie" Beale and her daughter, "Little Edie" Beale, relatives of " Jackie 0 who fell ft am the heights of so· ciety to living in a crumbling, Gothic East I' Hampton mansion called Grey Gardens, surrounded by cats and raccoons and .</p><p> I creeping memories . j' In Act I (set in 1941), Ebersole plays the 50-ish Dig Edie. who hopes to steal the limelight at her young daughter's engage ment party by planning a miniconcert of her own In Act II (set in 1973).</p><p> Ebersole be-, comes Little Edie (with Mary Louise Wilson I playing the now 80-ish Big Edie), a droll, paranoiac woman with odd fashion sense I who shuffles around the tumble-down es tate and battles with her mother.</p><p> Ebersole says that in preview perfor mances and in the show's previous hit Off Broadway incarnation, audiences fell silent watching Little Edie's painful vulnerability. "To have tbat experience is so power ful, because everyone's connecting to that part of themselves that understands [how] we're all the same," says Ebersole . ''We all identify with the humanity of that." In 1999, an agent helpfully told Ebersole she was over the hill. "Success [on 1V] depended on things outside my control.</p><p> It depended on my Q rating" - a system by which a performer's appeal is tracked -"or my age or my looks.</p><p> Talent didn't have to figure in.</p><p> What made me leave L.A. -and my husband and I decided it together -was a faith The 53-year-old actress is clearly feeling like she has come in from the wilderness.</p><p> As Ebersole, who lives in Maplewood , N.J_, reclines on a couch in her dressing room, she talks passionately about politics. delves into childhood memories and recounts mis-.'.' ,~ EberSOle' felt . : she 'could pot my talents to [better1 Use,' that I could put my talents to [bet ter] use," she says.</p><p> Her faith was rewarded with a role in Gore Vidal's "The Best Man." Then in 200 I. she won a Tony for her turn in the hit revival of "42nd Street." A year later, she was nominated for "Dinner at Eight." steps alongSide accomplishments _ After an early stage triumph in a revival of "Oklahoma!" -followed imme diately by a turn in "Camelot" in 1980, as Guenevere opposite Richard Burton and Richard Harris, slage and screen Arthurs -Ebersole was in the second wave of "Sat urday Night Live's" Not Ready for Prime Time Players in 1981, with Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo She lasted one season.</p><p> Then she moved to Los Angeles, doing small roles in major films like "Tootsie" (1982) and "Amadeus" (\984). and, after brietly returning to Broadway for the iII-fat ed "Harrigan & Hart" in 1985, beg"n a run of TV guest spots She starred in sitcoms that didn't make it (Ted Danson's "Ink") or family movies thai didn't bring in families ("Richie Rich." "My Favorite Mattian") .</p><p> When "Grey Gardens" opened Off-Broadway earlier this year, Doug Wright's book, Scott Frankel's score and Michael Korie's lyrics all earned raves, but it was Ebersole who made heads spin.</p><p> Its ar rival on Broadway has been much anticipat ed, thanks to her.</p><p> So now instead of being over the hill, she has reached her peal( "As you get older, the field Harrows." she says "But within the narrowing of that field came the role of a Iifetinle " And I hough she feels she returned at the right 1 ime. a bit of the Beale sisters seems to haunt her. "My only regret is that I didn't buy real estate in New York'" she says with a laugh "[ spent all my money on boots and hats My whole agenda was, spend everything you have, And now ... well, let'sjust say I'm hoping to gel out of debt by Christmas'" •
