Cue 1: | On lights-up from pre-set | (Page 1) |
1960s US telephone ring x 4 | ||
Cue 2: | ‘Who is this? Pete?’ | (Page 1) |
Static-heavy distorted recording of Marilyn Monroe song I Wanna Be Loved by You – the audience should be barely able to hear it let alone discern what it is | ||
Cue 3: | Noodle slams phone receiver into its cradle | (Page 1) |
Cut I Wanna Be Loved by You cue | ||
Cue 4: | ‘So I took an overdose and killed myself.’ | (Page 8) |
1960s US telephone ring x 2 | ||
Cue 5: | Four-Seven-Six-One-Eight-Nine-Oh. | (Page 8) |
Slightly less static-heavy distorted recording of Marilyn Monroe song I Wanna Be Loved by You than before – but the audience can still barely hear it or discern what it is | ||
Cue 6: | Noodle slams phone receiver into its cradle | (Page 8) |
Cut I Wanna Be Loved by You cue | ||
Cue 7: | ‘I swallowed all the pills I could find and…’ | (Page 21) |
1960s US telephone ring x 3 | ||
Cue 8: | She picks up telephone receiver. | (Page 21) |
Slightly less static-heavy distorted recording of Marilyn Monroe song I Wanna Be Loved by You than last time – the audience can now just sense that there might be a tune, but not what that tune actually is | ||
Cue 9: | Noodle slams phone receiver into its cradle | (Page 21) |
Cut I Wanna Be Loved by Youcue | ||
Cue 10: | ‘…hoping he’d do it again.’ | (Page 29) |
1960s US telephone ring x 4 | ||
Cue 11: | ‘…but I can’t…can’t, I…’ | (Page 31) |
1960s US telephone ring (continual) | ||
Cue 12: | She snatches up telephone receiver. | (Page 31) |
Cut 1960s US telephone ring (continual) Replace with: Telephone dead tone | ||
Cue 13: | She replaces telephone receiver. | (Page 31) |
Cue 14: | ‘Everything. Everything.’ | (Page 33) |
1960s US telephone ring x 2 | ||
Cue 15: | She picks up telephone receiver. | (Page 33) |
Slightly less static-heavy distorted recording of Marilyn Monroe song I Wanna Be Loved by You than last time – as the scene unfolds to the end of the play, the music becomes less distorted, gradually filling the stage, achieving full audio clarity on the line about not being able to aspire to anything higher (approx. 2m.24s) as Noodle’s legs begin to drop to the bed. |
||
NB. A helpful hint. This can all be timed carefully – as in the original production – so that once Noodle’s legs have finally dropped and she is lying still, the song has reached the breathy ‘pooooh!’ of Monroe blowing a kiss (approx. 2m.40s), which is, as you’ll observe, a rather smart cue for the lighting blackout. |
Copyright © 2015 by Elton Townend Jones
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THE UNREMARKABLE DEATH OF MARILYN MONROE is fully protected under the copyright laws of the British Commonwealth, including Canada, the United States of America, and all other countries of the Copyright Union. All rights, including professional and amateur stage productions, recitation, lecturing, public reading, motion picture, radio broadcasting, television and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved.
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Marilyn Monroe was once the most famous movie star in the world; but maybe she was famous for all the wrong reasons: her image, her sex appeal, her frailties and failings. She was known for playing dumb blondes, for her love affairs, her increasing lateness on set and her drug dependency. When she suddenly died, one night in August 1962, she was only thirty-six years old. Posthumously, she became remembered for yet more wrong reasons: she was killed by the Kennedys, she was killed by the Mafia; she killed herself. The sensation over her death has managed, for a long time, to eclipse the sensation of her life and the last fifty years has seen her remembered for a plethora of things, the very least of which seems to be the woman herself.
I first fell for Marilyn when I was twelve – twenty years after her death – which means that I’ve known for thirty years that I wanted to produce a work that recognised and investigated the truth behind the make-up and the peroxide to reveal something more substantial than a mere footnote in the Kennedy story or a regurgitation of all those things we think we know about this fascinating and beguiling woman.
This was my original Dyad Productions pitch (which I later used in press and publicity copy):
Marilyn as we’ve never seen her before. Alone in her bedroom in dressing gown and slippers; no glitz, no glamour, no masks. Overdosed on pills, the woman behind the icon drifts back through her life via the memories of her closest relationships. Making a stark confessional to the physical embodiment of her fame, and repeatedly stalked by her own death, Marilyn tells all (DiMaggio, Gable, Miller; it’s all here). Revealing her biting intelligence and an imperfect body, she exposes the truth behind the legend, leading us – in real time – to the very moment of her demise.
In researching this work, I made it my duty to only rely on information and anecdotes that came from multiple sources (unless it threw the corroborated facts into a kind of sharp relief that offered intriguing new glimpses of the real woman). Her life is documented in a thousand books, but her early years are often confused over the how and when of pivotal moments, and this is also true of her final hours. Regarding both, I have applied Occam’s Razor. Of her demise, I have concluded that there was no conspiracy. There is nothing remarkable about her death. It was a tragic accident. That said, the play remains deliberately coy about this, allowing for future revelations on the matter.
Once I’d drawn my conclusions about Marilyn’s death, my examination of her life – using books, watching newsreels and TV interviews, reading magazines and just spending long, long hours looking at photographs and imagining what she was thinking – led me to what I can only call my own ‘Theory of Marilyn’. It is this theory that informs the ‘plot’ of the play, and I arrived at it by joining a few seemingly un-joined dots that would tie some of her earliest experiences to her final ones whilst also answering some questions about the most controversial aspects of her adult life.
So. What if Marilyn – or, as she knew herself, Noodle – were able to reflect upon her remarkable life, one final time in that hour before she faded from the world? And what if we were summoned there by her vivacious spirit to bear witness to her final testimony? Which Marilyn would we see? We’d see the real deal – a talented artist, a brilliant comedian, a frustrated intellectual; an attractive, loving woman afflicted with physical and mental conditions that cursed her working and emotional life. We’d get the how and when, but also the why of Marilyn. And a little more besides.