They reprised one of the show's better songs, "A Single Dream," sung by the child Norma Jean to haunting effect early on. The show's decision to pretend that Marilyn just faded into the Hollywood hills is one of myriad problems. It wanted to be EVITA without being, well, EVITA.
(Corrected: The song was "A Single Dream" not "perfect" and very sad; oddly enough, I still remember the melody.)
The girl who played the young Marilyn was the girl I saw play Annie on the road. I remember she was very good. The youngest Annie to date, at the time. She was just nine years old, holding her own against Reid Shelton and Jane Connell.
On the audio I have when Young Marilyn re-entered to sing the reprise of "A Single Dream" with the brilliant Alyson Reed, she received massive entrance applause. It's kind of a thrilling, if silly moment. And you're right Auggie- It's an extremely catchy tune.
I'm actually a big fan of the score in general. "Cold Hard Cash," "You Are So Beyond" and "Miss Bubbles" are great songs. Marilyn: An American Fable is leagues better than Hey, Marilyn! (by Cliff Jones of Rockabye Hamlet fame) or Marilyn! (the London Marilyn musical).
I love the opening of Frank Rich's review of the piece:
"IF you read all the fine print in
the Playbill for 'Marilyn: An
American Fable,' you'll discover that the new musical at the Minskoff has 16 producers and 10 songwriters. If you mistakenly look up from the Playbill to watch the show itself, you may wonder whether those 26 persons were ever in the same rehearsal room - or even the same city - at the same time. On top of its many other failings, 'Marilyn' is incoherent to the point of being loony. I defy anyone to explain - just for starters - why 10 chorus boys dressed in pink plumbers' costumes sing a song about bubble baths at the climax of Act II.
The woman who summons the plumbers is supposed to be Marilyn Monroe, and it can be said without fear of contradiction that 'Marilyn' is meant to be the story of the ill- starred actress's life. But even this fact is occasionally in doubt. Patricia Michaels's libretto makes only scant mention of Monroe's movies (no mention at all of 'Some Like It Hot' or 'The Misfits') and vastly abridges the story of the actress's tempestuous personal life. If 'Marilyn' is to be believed, Monroe's biggest problem was insomnia - an ailment soon rectified when she takes to tap dancing through the streets of New York with fellow classmates from the Actors Studio.
It's the ending of the Frank Rich review that is more pertinent to Smash:
"Marilyn: An American Fable" is so confused that it never gets around to its heroine's death. If nothing else, it must be the first exploitation of the Monroe legend that even denies necrophiliacs a good time.
I remember very little of it except Scott Bakula, who was so hunky in his pre-TV-series days, and Willy Falk, who was really cute in his pre-Miss-Saigon days, and Michael Kubala and Ty Stephens, who were two of the trio who played one of the writers' most pretentious bits, a character called "Destiny."
Odd that in a musical about Marilyn, what I remember is the men.
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joined:5/12/03
Posted: 5/12/12 at 02:18am