Link: https://www.livetickets.org/whats-on/blonde-the-musical
Available until: 16th May 2021 on demand
I feel really mean about the two stars. I think this musical could be really good but it feels like a work in progress. I feel like I can see what the musical is trying to achieve but it’s not quite achieving it? But I think it could achieve it. It’s only an hour and a half including the interval so there’s lots of space to develop it further and show the characters and the story in more detail and make it really good.
Blonde the Musical is about the last nine years of Marilyn Monroe’s life, focusing her career and her personal life, including her marriages and friendships. There are also flashbacks to other parts of Marilyn’s life. Her former self, Norma Jeane Baker, also appears a character. At times she seems like a narrator, at other times she’s more like a positive inner voice for Marilyn but unlike the other people in Marilyn’s life who are so dominant, Norma Jeane doesn’t really exist anymore and she has very little power to change anything for Marilyn.
It is a sad story of betrayal, hurt and a struggle to survive in a harsh world. Maybe the sad thing is that things haven’t really changed. Marilyn seems like many celebrities today, never left alone by the Press who are always hovering in the hope of a negative story, lurching between relationships with celebrities, used for their own ends by a lot of the people she meets. Celebrities might have money and they seem to have status but they can’t be who they want to be and their lives belong to everyone else. They only need to make the smallest mistake and it will be all over the papers, only it will be exaggerated and sometimes with outright lies.
Adam Howell wrote the music and lyrics for Blonde. It all sounds really good and he is especially good at creating drama with dark and sad sounding waltz tunes. Some of the music feels less emotional but considering how powerful his best songs are, I’m sure he can make the rest of the music even better.
Paul Hurt wrote the book and it is good but quite lightweight. But the musical is so short, he could easily add in extra scenes and extend some of the scenes that are already there to help us get to know Marilyn even better. There’s a bit at the end which is actually really good where the characters talk about Marilyn in a positive way. I really loved it but I think I’d have liked it even more if some of what they talked about like her personality and her work ethic was shown more strongly in the script.
Norma Jeane being a separate character is really interesting because Dave (another blogger) said he saw a musical called Marilyn at the Wimbledon Studio Theatre about twenty years ago. This was also a musical and also used Norma Jeane as a separate character from Marilyn. I think it is a really good idea because Norma Jeane kind of reminds you how different Marilyn used to be and makes you think that as long as Norma Jeane is around, maybe Marilyn still is Norma Jeane inside.
Director Tom Hopcroft (who also co-produced the musical with Kristian Thomas and also played the role of Jimmy Dougherty, Marilyn’s first husband) has done really well with creating the appearance of the shallow world Marilyn lives in. The actors playing Marilyn and journalist Georgie Gifford are bubbled so they didn’t have to social distance and I really like the way Tom used this in a metaphorical way to show that Georgie might be the person who gets closest to Marilyn emotionally. Other people keep Marilyn at a bit of a distance because they aren’t really interested who she is. They’re more interested in what she is. I don’t know if this would happen in future productions where there is no social distancing but it does work.
Verity Power takes the role of Marilyn. She has a powerful voice and she is good at showing the different sides to Marilyn’s character, she can be very flirty and silly but she is also really good at the serious emotional side of the character. Finlay Paul is really lovely as Georgie Gifford. He seems really kind and he has the most beautiful singing voice but he is just as trapped into this world as Marilyn. Anna Bond is really stunning as Norma Jeane. She has a lot of really deep and important things to say and she says them really well so they have a big impact. Her singing is really secure and her voice is so beautiful.
An interesting casting choice is that both Marilyn’s famous husbands, baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, are played by the same actor, Charlie Ellerton. He plays them very differently, Joe seems angry and aggressive and Arthur is gentle and refined but I think maybe the fact they are played by the same actor is showing that Marilyn is making the same mistake again. They are very different but there is one thing they have in common, they are both wrong for Marilyn and they can’t give her what she needs.
The rest of the strong cast includes Louise Grantham who
characterises Marilyn’s acting coach Paula Strasberg and Marilyn’s Momma really
well. Maison Kelley somehow isn’t completely unsympathetic as the demanding but
very stressed Darryl Zanuck.
No comments:
Post a Comment