Cole Escola Channels Little Edie at Grey Gardens

They put this tennis court in the back; it’s just awful,” said Cole Escola, channeling Edith Bouvier Beale. Escola was taking a break from their Tony Award–winning performance as an over-the-top Mary Todd Lincoln in their hit play, Oh, Mary!, to visit Grey Gardens, no longer the crumbling estate of Beale’s day thanks to its new owner, the designer Liz Lange. How about the wisteria in the garden? “I don’t think you can count those as flowers.”

It was Escola’s first time in the Hamptons, but they discovered Little Edie long ago, when they first moved to New York. Grey Gardens “was sort of my comfort movie,” they said. “I would watch it over and over again. I became obsessed with her. She just had a sort of sense, in a way that I did as well, that there’s something in New York for me. She just couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She couldn’t quite find the dream.”

Escola, who finished with Mary on June 21 after more than a year in the role Off Broadway and on, found it easy to slip into character as another eccentric with an appreciation for cabaret. What would she make of East Hampton today? “It’s still a mean, nasty Republican town,” Escola said, adopting the younger Beale’s whine. “Mother would be sick about the cost of ice cream.”

In fact, much like the actor invoking her, Little Edie was ready to leave it all behind and return to the big city where she belongs — onstage. “I would like to sing again. I would like to dance the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ from Salami.”