GREY GARDENS, Starring Sheila Hancock and Jenna Russell, Opens Tonight at Southwark Playhouse

The eagerly awaited European première of the Broadway musical GREY GARDENS, based on an iconic 1975 documentary, tells the spectacular real life rise and fall of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's aunt and cousin, Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale. The production began a 6-week season in The Large at Southwark Playhouse from on 2 January and officially opens tonight 7 January 2016.

Joining Olivier Award-winning West End stars Sheila Hancock and Jenna Russell are Billy Boyle, Aaron Sidwell, Jeremy Legat, Ako Mitchell, Rachel Anne Rayham, and child actors Alana Hinge, Grace Jenkins, Rebecca Nardin and Eleanor Waldron.

The full creative team features: Director Thom Southerland, Musical Supervisor Simon Lee, Musical Director Michael Bradley, Choreographer Lee Proud, Set Designer Tom Rogers, Lighting Designer Howard Hudson, Sound Designer Andrew Johnson, Costume Designer Jonathan Lipman, Producer/Casting Director Danielle Tarento.

GREY GARDENS, with Book by Doug Wright, Music by Scott Frankel, Lyrics by Michael Korie, is produced by Danielle Tarento and directed by Thom Southerland, the award-winning team behind Grand Hotel, Titanic, Parade and Mack & Mabel.

Starting in 1941 at an engagement party at GREY GARDENS, the Bouvier's mansion in East Hampton, Long Island, the musical tracks the progression of the two women's lives from American aristocrats to reclusive social outcasts living in such squalid conditions, in a home overrun by cats, that the Health Department deemed the mansion "unfit for human habitation."

Check out a first look at the production shot here!

Photo Credit: Scott Rylander