"Grey Gardens" is not an easy show to do. It requires a complicated set, an understanding of human nature that is both excessive and subtle, strong musical skills, a terrific costumer and a fantastic cast that can handle a complex show.

The Ephrata Performing Arts Center's production of "Grey Gardens," which opened Thursday, works beautifully on all those levels.

Perhaps you've seen other versions of "Grey Gardens," including a 2009 HBO movie and the 1975 documentary that introduced Edie Bouvier Beale and her daughter, also named Edie, to the world.

The women have certainly fascinated plenty of people.

How could Big Edie and Little Edie, as they came to be known, have gone from the American aristocracy in the 1940s (They were the aunt and niece of Jackie Kennedy Onassis) to living in poverty and squalor at their East Hampton home, Grey Gardens, in the 1970s?

What happened to these two smart, beautiful women?

Only a sure-footed production like the one at EPAC can even begin to answer that question.

The first act is set in 1941, when a young, beautiful and feisty Little Edie (played in this act by an amazing Julie Connors) is engaged to Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. (Zack Jackson), who has ambitions to be president. (He was killed in the war and there is no proof he was ever engaged to Little Edie, though she claimed they were.)

The house is beautiful, Big Edie (Kristie Ohlinger) is eccentric and manipulative, but quite elegant. A young Jackie and her sister, Lee (Natalie Young and Lauren Elledge) hang out in their riding clothes. Money oozes out of the place.

But there are tensions that will foreshadow the second act, set in the 1970s.

Why does Big Edie tell Kennedy about other men in her daughter's life? Her relationship with her father (Tim Spiese) and her unseen husband, is fraught with conflict. Her father calls her a pitiful creature, "an actor without a stage."

Clearly, the two women love to perform, and clearly, they don't fit into the confining roles of women in America's aristocracy,

The act ends with Little Edie leaving the house, vowing not to return to her mother because "you'll make me disappear."

Act 1 is fictionalized, but essential to understanding the reality of Big and Little Edie in the second act, which pretty much comes from the 1975 documentary.

In the second act, Ohlinger is Little Edie 32 years later, living in a bizarre prison with her mother, now played by Barbara Strong Ellis.

Little Edie is a delight. Funny and wise but also quite strange, Ohlinger is astounding. It's not just her accent, or her body language that works to define Little Edie. She goes beyond a mere imitation to become Little Edie, digging past the eccentricities to give us a real, complex, tragic character.

Ultimately, the performance is heartbreaking, as we see her struggling to leave her mother, but unable to do so. Yes, she's strange, but sadly and wonderfully human.

And the connection between Connors and Ohlinger is uncanny.

Ellis gives a strong and uncanny performance herself. Her Big Edie has no qualms about her choices, about her strange existence amongst 52 cats, raccoons, insects and fleas. She is truly liberated and perfectly happy.

The rest of the cast is solid, including Robert Brock as Big Edie's witty cocktail swilling, piano playing Greek chorus; Jackson, who is a suave Kennedy in the first act and then the dumb but witty teenager, Jerry, who hung out with Big Edie in the second act.

Kudos to director Ed Fernandez for finding the perfect tone for the show and getting great performances from his Edies.

Musical director Derek Martin and his orchestra do a great job with the often haunting and frequently witty music.

Veronica Craig's costumes are perfect. Her first act clothes are elegant and classic. In the second act, she goes to town with Little Edie's bizarre fashion ideas.

And Mike Rhoads does a terrific job with a set that has to go from East Hampton glamor to squalor. But more than that, we have to go back and forth from the inside to the outside in quick progression without slowing down the action.

"Grey Gardens" is funny, tragic and intriguingly strange. It's a show you won't soon forget.

jholahan@lnpnews.com