Christine Ebersole is 'The View' Guest Host, Feb. 9

"The View" will welcome award-winning Grey Gardens star Christine Ebersole as a guest host on Friday, February 9th.

She will join regular hosts Rosie O'Donnell, Barbara Walter, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.  The episode will also feature Josh Groban (Actors' Fund Chess concert) as a guest performer.  "The View" airs on ABC from 11 AM-noon (check local listings).

Ebersole, a Tony Award-winner for her performance in 42nd Street and a Tony-nominee for her work in Dinner at Eight, has won a multitude of awards for her work as both "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and "Little Edie" Beale in Grey Gardens. She has also appeared on Broadway in Steel Magnolias, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Getting Away with Murder, Camelot, Oklahoma! and On the Twentieth Century, as well as at Encores! in A Connecticut Yankee, Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, Lady in the Dark and Allegro.  Her film credits include My Girl 2, Amadeus and the TV musical version of Gypsy.  She is also a noted cabaret artist.

Grey Gardens, after a hit run at Playwrights Horizons, began previews at the Walter Kerr Theatre on October 3rd and opened on November 2nd.  In addition to Ebersole (42nd Street, Dinner at Eight) and Mary Louise Wilson (Cabaret, Full Gallop), Grey Gardens stars John McMartin, Bob Stillman, Matt Cavenaugh, Michael Potts, and Sarah Hyland (all from the Playwrights Horizons production), as well as Broadway newcomer Erin Davie as Young 'Little' Edie Beale, and Kelsey Fowler.

The musical features a book by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winner Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. The show, which is directed by Tony Award nominee and Obie winner Michael Greif, "brings to life both the delightfully eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, these two women became East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Set in two eras – in 1941 when the estate was in its prime and in 1973 when it was reduced to squalor – the musical tells the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of two indomitable individuals, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter 'Little' Edie," according to production notes.

For tickets and information, visit www.greygardensthemusical.com.  Visit www.abc.com for more on "The View."

Photo of Christine Ebersole by Ben Strothmann