Marilyn Monroe made her Los Angeles operatic debut Saturday night at San Pedro’s historic Warner Grand Theatre.
Indeed it was such an important occasion that Marilyn was there twice (not counting the one available for runway photos before-hand), impersonated by sopranos Danielle Marcelle Bond and Jamie Chamberlin as Long Beach Opera presented “Marilyn Forever,” the U.S. premiere of Gavin Bryars and Marilyn Bowering’s emotionally compelling work.
Bryars provided the score and performed as the bass player onstage Saturday while Bowering wrote the powerful poetry that informed the work, except when the projected titles didn’t work in the first few minutes of the 80-minute, one-act piece.
The work premiered in 2013 in Victoria, British Columbia, with conductor Bill Linwood, who conducted Saturday, directing the orchestra. A few weeks ago it made its Australian debut at the Adelaide Festival. The work was commissioned originally by Canada’s Aventa Ensemble.
This production, designed and directed by Andreas Mitisek, Long Beach Opera’s general and artistic director, contains a twist. Both previous productions featured just one singer as Monroe, but Mitisek decided that two were needed, one for the public persona of Monroe (Chamberlin) and another for the private, Norma Jeane role (Bond). The success of this concept was seen in the audience reaction — several people said afterward they couldn’t imagine the piece with just one Marilyn.
The story unfolds at the Warner Grand with a makeup table at center stage. On one side is the introspective, damaged and suicidal Monroe, on the other the public, successful Monroe. Behind the scrims is a jazz trio and two singers, called the Tritones, acting as a Greek chorus of sorts. The scrims are raised and lowered and used as a projection screen, not just for historic videos of Monroe’s life and death, but for live video feeds of the action onstage thanks to the video design of Adam Flemming. Mitisek has used video in earlier productions, but in this one it is a seamless addition to the work.
Bryars’ music is compassionate and also a bit breezy, a jazz score that uses the onstage trio and a small pit orchestra under Linwood to light the ongoing stage action. The music is bright and light when Monroe the star is on, darker when the other Monroe is on, but it never overpowers the drama. Bowering’s original 1987 poetry collection “Anyone Can See I Love You,” about Monroe’s life and death, is deftly conveyed by the action and the sometimes sexy score.
The two Marilyns give the story depth. Chamberlin is the intellectual one, taking charge, singing with delight as her career develops. Bond is the tragic one, slowly giving in to pills as her life falls apart. But even in success, Chamberlin’s Monroe has problems: three marriages, men who she cannot give her love to fully. And Bond, sometimes singing simultaneously with Chamberlin, sometimes lost in her own world of despair, is deeply touching.
Lee Gregory plays all the men in Monroe’s life, the rehearsal director (based on Billy Wilder) and her three husbands, most notably Arthur Miller, the last and the one who helped Monroe find her intellectual self. Gregory conveys the authority that Monroe seemed to be seeking in her life, the acceptance she never seemed to find. The videos, using framed photographs of her husbands as part of the story, make his various characters clear.
In the pit, Linwood conducted with energy and an edge. He knows the score well. Onstage, the trio played with a jazzy feel, almost improvisational as the story unfolded on the stage and on screen. The Tritones provided support for the story, and the two Marilyns, clothed in the iconic dress from “The Seven Year Itch,” had very different reactions to success. At the work’s end, they come together in the tragic incident that ended Monroe’s brief but spectacular life.
The work is intriguing, passionate and informative, and uses the Warner Grand’s space effectively and intelligently.
John Farrell is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.
