© Michael With Peter Schaufuss 'Marilyn' reviews Deakin in reviews Petter in reviews recent Peter Schaufuss reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

In a peach of a role created for his off stage wife, Zara Deakin, he creates an opening flurry of scene setting episodes galloping along to Monroe soundtracks. Schaufuss’s permanent set is a miniature Hollywood Bowl in which we see a pig tailed Norma Jeane (Agnete Beierholm) watch her schizophrenic mother (Caroline Petter) dragged off by men in white coats leaving her daughter to abusive foster parents and a future haunted by the fear of genetic madness. Schaufuss’s own crazy take on life’s tragedies soon has prancing marines and demented French maids punctuating Marilyn’s sordid path out of white trash hell until, propelled by the casting couch, a sudden manifestation of a pink boudoir features a gold encased Deakin as Monroe, bemused by her progress to the big screen but knowing there is no going back.

Zara Deakin as Marilyn Monroe
© Michael With

Acutely sensitive, Deakin picks her way through a minefield, avoiding clichéd victim while exploring the child/woman sensing an instinctive need for men will prove as fatal as the ever present horror of inherited schizophrenia. Joe DiMaggio (Adam Kirkham), Elia Kazan (Robin Bernadet) come and go until she meets highbrow Arthur Miller, a gangling maelstrom of lust and repression impressively played by Stefan Wise. She blossoms in his world, he just has to get out; she feels like a real woman at last, he is destroyed by her domesticity. Schaufuss’s powerful denouement is the infamous Happy Birthday Mr. President tribute as Marilyn gives up and gives in to John F Kennedy (Joseph Vesely). Alone in the Oval Office he strips her down to a glittering body stocking, her physique pulsating with life, her spirit fatally defeated. There is nothing so corrosive as self loathing. Schaufuss has created a true parable for today, a gallop through time and space with wit and beauty while engaging our hearts with life’s tragic undertow.