✭✭✭✭✩
<b>by Nonnie Griffin, directed by Peggy Mahon
Crazy Folk Productions and Fern Densem, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
October 10-19, 2014
</b>
Monroe: “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was
talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or
anyone else”
If Marilyn Monroe were alive today she would be 88. If you want the experience of getting to know Monroe as an elderly woman, you need merely to see the show <i>Marilyn – After</i>, written by and starring Nonnie Griffin. To hear Monroe recount her horrific childhood and the degradation of playing the “Hollywood Game”, it’s amazing that Monroe survived as long as she did, let alone achieved such lasting fame. Griffin does not suggest that Monroe’s life is a feminist parable, but the view she gives presents the obverse side of Monroe’s status as a sex symbol. Treated as an object rather than a person, she was a woman victimized by men her entire life.
The premise of Griffin’s solo show is that Monroe’s wish has been granted to be reincarnated as an older woman. She made that wish because she never had the experience of being an older person and she always liked and admired older people throughout her life. Monroe has also asked to come back in to have the chance finally to tell her own version of her life story. She also has an even more important reason for wishing to return that she reveals at the very end of the show which I will not reveal except to say that it is touching and, from what we learn of Monroe, has the ring of truth.
Marilyn Monroe was born as Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, to Gladys Baker and Martin Mortenson, address unknown. Since Gladys was both poor and mentally unstable, Norma Jeane was placed with foster parents with whom she lived until she was seven. Griffin has Monroe recall the horrifying incident when a crazed Gladys turned up at Norma Jeane’s foster home and tried to kidnap her.
Norma Jeane was declared a ward of the state and Gladys’s best friend Grace, whom Norma Jeane calls her “Aunt Grace”, became her guardian. Grace loved movies and passed this love on to Norma Jeane. Unfortunately, when Grace married, she discovered that her new husband kept trying to sexually assault his foster daughter. To thwart her husband’s evil intentions, Grace had Norma Jeane sent to live in an orphanage, even though she was not an orphan. This led to her being sent to live in more than a dozen foster homes before she was finally taken in by her “Aunt” Ana.
Realizing that Norma Jeane felt insecure about having dropped out of high school and seeing that the girl had a true thirst for knowledge, Aunt Ana drew up a reading list of the world’s greatest books – including novels byTolstoy, Dostoevsky and Proust – that Norma Jeane continued to read throughout her life.
Griffin discusses Norma Jeane’s famous nude calendar, her name change and her determination to get into movies. The “Hollywood Game” Monroe refers to turns out to be even worse than the casting couch. Young women even hoping to be considered for a role in a movie were expected to provide sexual favours for higher-ups in the studios. Here Griffin has Monroe reveal one of the many paradoxes about this sex symbol – namely, that she never enjoyed sex and never had an orgasm. One might say that with her history of sexual abuse and with the prostitution required for a film career, her difficulties with sex and self-worth were completely understandable.
Griffin takes us through the peculiar bits parts Monroe landed, including one in a Marx Brothers movie, until her talent was finally noticed in <i>The Asphalt Jungle</i> (1950) and <i>All About Eve</i> (1950). We learn of her success following <i>Niagara</i> (1953) through <i>The Seven Year Itch</i> (1955) during which Monroe attained fame but also became typecast as a dumb blonde.
Griffin seamlessly integrates Monroe’s childhood and her stardom under the single theme of a woman seeking respect – first as a person, second as an actress. To achieve this second goal Monroe enrolled in the famous Actors Studio under Lee and Paula Strasberg. She finally gained acclaim for her acting in <i>Bus Stop</i> (1956) and was encouraged to form her own production company to ensure she would have serious roles to play in subsequent films. The first of these was <i>The Prince and The Showgirl</i> (1957), in which she played opposite Laurence Olivier. Since Monroe loved Shakespeare, one of her many surprising plans was to produce a series of films of based on Shakespeare’s plays.
Throughout the show Griffin shows that no matter how Monroe tries to prove that she has a brain as well as a body, men who in her time still held all the keys to power are too blinded by her beauty to understand her. This group of men includes her four husbands and eventually John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. In moving from the circle of power in Hollywood to the circles of power in Washington, D.C., Monroe and her search for respect finally puts her mortal danger. The President and the Attorney General may have thought they could use and discard her, but they came to realize when she threatened to call a press conference that she would not keep quiet about the brothers’ series of immoral activities which could jeopardize JFK’s re-election.
In relating the events of Monroe’s death, Griffin closely follows the most recent investigation of the evidence laid out in <i>The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed</i> (2014) by Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin. Here there is no question of Monroe committing suicide as was reported at the time. Rather, Griffin has Monroe tell us that Robert Kennedy wanted the little red book in which Monroe kept notes on the activities of JFK and RFK. When she refused to give it to him, she was murdered in a way to make it look like a drug overdose, even though the pathologist at the time found no evidence of the drug being ingested. In the context of Griffin’s play, Monroe’s death thus becomes the ultimate example of Monroe’s abuse at the hands of men.
In playing Monroe, Griffin has adopted Monroe’s signature manner of delivery and gestures so that you soon succumb to the uncanny feeling that if Monroe had reached 88 this is exactly how she would be. She has the breathy voice and Monroe’s odd habit (explained in the play) of over-enunciating her words. Every time Griffin would have Monroe humorously punctuate a story by raising her shoulders and coyly glancing over one of them, I felt a chill of recognition. Griffin also enlivens Monroe’s narration by imitating the voices – more than 25 in all – of people Monroe speaks with. Given Griffin’s vocal versatility it’s too bad someone thought it necessary for her to use a mic in such a small space as Buddies’ 100-seat cabaret.
This is a play not just for Monroe fans but for anyone who wants to know exactly how poorly women were treated in the 1940s though ‘60s. It’s a period that has grown popular now but the ethos of inherent male superiority and its attendant objectification of women is not one for which we should feel any nostalgia. Griffin’s play leaves you with even greater respect for Monroe’s struggles and her gifts.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photos: Nonnie Griffin as Marilyn Monroe. ©2014 Yuri Dojc.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://buddiesinbadtimes.com">http://buddiesinbadtimes.com</a>.
<b>2014-10-12</b>
<b>Marilyn – After</b>