Part 1 (0-4:33) and Part 2 (4:33-11:51) “A side of Marilyn never expressed before!” said Joe Franklin, longtime New York showbiz maven on Bloomberg Radio. “The show is phenomenal! Best one-person performance I have ever seen!” said Ted Kavanau, Founding Senior Producer of CNN television network. And Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat. Pray. Love.” said “The talented and beautiful Louisa Bradshaw is Pure Radiance as Marilyn. I loved her in this show.” In our recent Off Broadway, one-woman musical (w/ pianist), now titled The Musical Memoirs of Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Sings), women over 30 especially loved our Marilyn - or our happier vision of an older, wiser but still gorgeous Norma Jean. She’s still alive, you see, after 51 not-so-bad years in Purgatory (“Celestial Rehab,” she calls it) and she tells the story of how she’s become the much happier and fulfilled, less haunted woman she always wanted to be (but never could while trapped like a mummy inside the Golden Mask of Marilyn Monroe). She’s continued her studies of herself and her era - and her craft. She thinks she’s a better actress now, and she begins with a loving re-creation of her raging Mother in the Institution (who actually manages to forgive her wayward daughter.) And Norma Jean’s definitely a more full-throated singer now; Purgatory has opened up her voice as well as her personality. The play’s through-line is her looking back on her storied life with a new understanding and compassion. And she talks and sings about other stars she sees now as “relatives” almost as much as she does herself – Elvis, for one (“I’ll be so lonely, baby/ I’ll be so lonely I could die”) as well as Judy Garland, George Sanders, Rita Hayworth, even Marlene Dietrich. (Norma Jeanne does a mean “Black Market”). She also sings about her star ideals – Doris Day (“Love Me or Leave Me”) and Ella Fitzgerald (Did you know that Marilyn Monroe “integrated Hollywood”? She got Ella a gig at the formerly segregated Mocambo Club?) Perhaps the key through-line is her dawning discovery of her True Audience – in the theatre. While making movies, she was notoriously difficult to work with, and she realizes now the reason was she couldn’t see the audience – “except for the angry audience in my dizzy head.” And so she keeps remembering her greatest happiness in her brief life: her only appearance before a Live Audience. Those 17,000 GI’s in Korea somehow made her feel at home for once in her life, like she was Their Girl Next Door. I hope you’ll view some excellent samples of our star Louisa Bradshaw’s fabulous performance of this fable – and Lissa Moira’s wonderful direction -at “See Our Marilyn Monroe 2" on YouTube. (It was amazing to see how she and Gregory Nissen, our musical director, held an audience, just chatting and singing. A shorter ad (4 min.) is now called “Musical Memoirs of Marilyn Monroe.” (They loved the show but didn’t get our original title, “Siren’s Heart.”) Three of Norma Jean’s original songs are based on poems by her new favorite poet, W. B. Yeats: “The Mask” becomes a sexy vogue (great choreography): “Oh do not ask what is behind the mask/ It was the mask that first engaged your mind” (with a more somber reprise I’d like to add); “For Anne Gregory” becomes a belting “Love Is Blond Blues”, and “Brown Penny” becomes a “French song” she sings as Yves Montand sang to her during their “glorious” affair (“O love’s a very crooked thing/ there’s no one wise enough . . .”). Other originals are her Opener, “Looking At Her”, a mystical samba in which she imagines herself as at once the Goddess and as one of Her countless Worshippers; her torch song to Arthur Miller (and Joe Dimaggio, who loved her most), “If You Could See Me As I Am (but you can’t see me for your Fantasy); a mournful lullaby for the Child She Lost, based on Hopkins’ “Margaret Are You Grieving/ Over Goldengrove Unleaving? (Fall is love/ May Love follow you.”) And that NYC crowd pleaser, our star’s own “Shiksa Strip:” I know it wasn’t your decision/ but I just love your circumcision.” She also “quotes” from her Fifties Favorites; Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa” especially spoke to her: “Are you warm/ are you real, Mona Lisa?/ Or just a cold and lonely , lovely work of art?” Not the usual sad biopic about her, The Musical Memoirs of Marilyn Monroe is a very different, more joyful take on Marilyn - and Her Legend. In our play’s Purgatory, Norma Jean does indeed “raise her consciousness,” surmount her personal demons and Discover Her True Audience - in the Theatre. It’s a play about the Second Chance we all wish we had; it’s about the Marilyn Who Might Have Been. Walt Stepp 111 4th Ave.-7F New York, NY 10003 P.S. No conspiracy theories about her death or affairs with the Kennedys in this narrative.

• published: 15 Sep 2014
• views: 2