Fans of Marilyn Monroe will know the significance of the play’s title. The troubled screen goddess and her playwright husband Arthur Miller stayed in Reno during the shooting of John Huston’s 1961 critically acclaimed film The Misfits, with the screenplay written by Miller as a vehicle for his wife.
How any relationship would withstand that arrangement is questionable anyway, but add into the mix Marilyn’s deep-seated insecurity, her increasing reliance on alcohol and prescription drugs, and the inevitable accompanying neuroses and it’s a heady cocktail.
The first half of the play in Brighton’s lovely new theatre Rialto sets the scene for their crumbling marriage, hinting at Marilyn’s abandonment as a child and string of foster parents; her past marriages, miscarriages, depression, insomnia, chronic tardiness – while the second zings along with a sparkling script cleverly entwining themes and lines from
Miller’s own screenplay, and more killer lines (“If you can’t handle me at my worst then you sure don’t deserve me at my best”) than you’d think possible in one play.
Robert Cohen excels as an exasperated and ultimately mocking Miller ("another suicide threat? It must be a weekday") while Lauren Varnfield perfectly captures the fragile mental state of the tormented actress whose desperate need to be loved eventually destroys her. An intense, thought-provoking production.
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