Opening its 14th season, Wasatch Theatre Company is producing a regional premiere of the triple Tony Award-winning musical “Grey Gardens.”

Director George Plautz describes the musical as a unique theatrical hybrid, from tabloid story to documentary to stage musical. “It’s definitely not your typical musical and it is very presentational in style; even more so than most musicals since in the second act the characters talk directly to the audience.”

Based on the 1975 documentary of the same name, “Grey Gardens” tells the riches-to-rags story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ aunt and cousin. Once among the brightest names in the social register, Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale became East Hampton’s most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion alongside dozens of cats and piles of rubbish. The musical is set in two eras: 1941, when the estate was at its full grandeur, and 1973, after it had been reduced to squalor.

The show, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doug Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”), lyricist Michael Korie and composer Scott Frankel, received a workshop in 2005 at Sundance Theatre Lab in Florida before going on to earn critical acclaim during its 2006-07 Broadway run. “Grey Gardens” was also made into an HBO film, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, which aired in spring 2009.

Plautz began working with the company in 1999 when he directed “The Fantasticks,” and since then has been directing, producing, writing, performing in productions and acting as the company’s dramaturg. He co-wrote and directed “Hands Up,” an original musical adaptation of a young-adult novel about a serial-killer puppet, for the company’s 2009 Page-to-Stage Festival.

Plautz was enthralled by “Grey Gardens” from the time he heard the cast recording. The company was at first leery because the requirements for setting the two acts are so different, but discussed ways to make the changes more suggestive than realistic. “We have found it so amazing that a work based on a very unique, bizarre family situation resonated so much with each of us,” Plautz says. “There are such strong themes in the show about dreams deferred, the choices for women during the mid-20th century, the need for love and the fear of loneliness.”

Cast members in the show range from age 8 to 68, with Edith Bouvier Beale played by Sallie Cooper and her adult daughter Little Edie played by Jennifer Perry-Hughes. Perry-Hughes also plays Big Edie to Ali Goldsmith’s young Little Edie in the first act.

Cooper recently directed the company’s production of “Greater Tuna” and performed in Hale Centre Theatre’s “A Tale of Two Cities” and Parable Productions “Godspell.” She began working with Wasatch in 2003 after moving from Salt Lake City to Manhattan. She had decided, after teaching, producing and directing, that she wanted to return to acting. “I threw my hat into the ring for the role of Big Edie and was both thrilled and terrified when I got the call from George saying I was being offered the role,” Cooper said. “She is one of those ‘roles of a lifetime’ for me, and now I was getting the opportunity to delve into the psyche of this eccentric, beautiful, selfish, clever woman.”

She calls the character repulsive and pitiable, while also clever and calculating, “but always I see her humanity in the love she has for her daughter.”

While researching the story, Cooper learned that many of the song lyrics and most of the script had been lifted from the documentary.

Perry-Hughes teaches theater and directs productions for Ogden’s Saint Joseph Catholic High School while studying acting and French at Weber State University. “Thanks to YouTube, I have been able to spend hours watching Edie, studying her movement, listening to her speech patterns, learning about her relationships,” Perry-Hughes said. “It’s great to actually have the ‘real’ Edie to study for characterization, both physical and vocal, but at the same time it’s daunting to play someone who really existed.”

The cast and director believe the show will appeal to a wide range of theatergoers. “This is a show for strong women, and men who love strong women,” Cooper says. “It is a beautiful peek into a bygone era and speaks to all of us who find ourselves stuck in a life that we never dreamed we would live.”

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