“That’s the
trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing… I just hate being a thing…” Marilyn Monroe or Norma Jeane Mortenson
People should be queuing around the block to see Marilyn Monroe
explaining her take on the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein… it’s to do
with a green train, a red train, two flashlights owned by Mickey and by Donald…
It has been over 20 years since Terry Johnson’s play Insignificance was last performed in
London and now, when our faith in expertise is being questioned, the
possibility of the glamorous even attempting to digest theoretical physics is
challenging. We don’t know if Miss Monroe dabbled in physics but we do know
that she was a lot more intelligent than her carefully-crafted persona allowed
her to let on.
She was not the first to dumb down for her audience but
she carried it off in style enjoying Groucho Marx’s description of her persona
as a combination of Theda Bara (a knowing soul herself), Mae West and Little
Bo-Peep.
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| It is all relative: Alice Bailey Johnson and Simon Rouse |
She was famously married to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio,
a man who here confesses to enjoying being “stupid” and deliberately choosing
not to engage but it’s not clear whether she met Senator Joe McCarthy, here
portrayed as a solipsist who believes that he is the only one who exists and
that everyone else is a figment of his imagination – that would explain a lot
Joe.
The three converge on a mid-town hotel in the play as Marilyn
knocks on Albert’s door in the middle of the night, looking for an intelligent
conversation and perhaps more… Albert is lost in the music of mathematics as he
weighs up whether or not to testify in front of McCarthy’s House Committee on
Un-American Activities. He’s a man of honour as Joe D will later suggest but he
too is hiding himself, away from his two broken marriages, his estranged daughter,
institutionalised son and the dread of what his theories have unleashed on the
World.
He imagines the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whilst the
senator wants his voice precisely because he wasn’t directly connected with the
bomb unlike those such as Oppenheimer who applied his theories in devastating
fashion…
Given all of this it’s not surprising that Albert and Marilyn
should hit it off like a house on fire…
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| Say it ain't so, Joe... |
Johnson’s daughter Alice Bailey Johnson makes for a marvellous
Monroe from the moment she spills into Albert’s room clutching a brown-paper bag
full of items to demonstrate relativity to the professor. She’s got the dress but you have to be brave to
exude “Monroe” and Alice delivers in some style! It’s the night when the skirt-blowing scene
for The Seven Year Itch was filmed
and following announcements in the newspapers, the late night shoot has been
witnessed by thousands each projecting their own desires onto the actress. But
Einstein doesn’t know who she is… to her delight: at last, someone she can be
herself with!
Simon Rouse takes on another tough task… it’s not easy
being Albert either and he carries it with the easy-charm you’d expect of such
a cerebral man. Famously the scientist only focused on the thoughts that were
useful and tried to forget the “excess” – he’s not absent-minded, just focused
and, with Marilyn, he finds someone he can open up to. The more you watch the
play, the more these two appear meant for each other… Johnson’s writing is so
strong on character and consistency of sentiment.
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| The senator slimes into the room... |
The two Joes are well-played by Oliver Hembrough, whose chewing-gum
popping DiMageo barely understands his wife other than as a physical experience,
and Tom Mannion playing McCarthy as an ego-maniac for whom cruelty was an
extension of his self-definition. They are both distractions who fail to acknowledge
what’s actually playing out in front of them.
But it’s those who have the most to hide who express
themselves the clearest and we would do well in this era of the fake and the
phony to recognise their truth.
Insignificance
plays at the Arcola Theatre until Saturday 18th November – tickets and more
details are available on their website. It's an excellent venue all round and one of E8's finest gems!
IThankYou Rating:
****
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| All photographs from Alex Brenner |
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