Heart of “Marilyn, Mom & Me” Wrapped in Awkwardness

Clearly, Luke Yankee loves his mother, actress Eileen Heckart. But she was hard on him when he tried to follow in her footsteps, and their relationship has always been strained. So after she receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, he tries to bond with her by asking about Marilyn Monroe, whom she befriended when they worked together on Bus Stop a few years before he was born. You see, on the rare occasions she’s talked about the Blonde Bombshell she’s immediately been overcome with sadness, so if he can get her to open up maybe he’ll better understand her, or they’ll get closer, or….

Marilyn, Mom & Me, currently world premiering at International City Theatre, unpacks all this by hopping around in time — primarily between 1956, when Eileen (Laura Gardner) and Marilyn (Alisha Soper) became friends, and 2001, when Eileen tells Luke (Brian Rohan) all about it. But only an audience that can look past the painful awkwardness plaguing every aspect of this production will appreciate what a deeply personal story this is for the playwright.

It all starts with the script, where Yankee’s heavy hand constantly beats us about the head. Marilyn to Eileen: “I never want to be another piece of merchandise sold on a Hollywood pushcart. Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in.” Eileen (yelling) to Luke: “Biggest star in the goddamn world, and she’s still empty!” On and on with pithy or quippy lines that never sound like dialog. Although Show, don’t tell may be an oversimplified writing dictum, Yankee could have used it. And he did himself no favors by choosing to direct, as he’s guided every one of his cast members into a morass of bathos, often having them cheat to the audience so much that they’re often in conversation standing basically shoulder-to-shoulder.

There are also casting problems. Rather than opting for two actors to play Eileen — one in her 30s, one in her 80s — having Gardner do both leaves us with coevals Eileen and Marilyn evincing a glaring generation gap. And when 50ish Rohan plays Luke as a tot, it’s a caricature of childhood, all tensed arms excitedly bobbing up and down.

The doubling is just as problematic with Noah Wagner and Jacqueline Lorraine Schofield taking on numerous roles. Although I’ve seen Wagner do nice work in several plays over the years, here he does next to nothing to differentiate his more than half-dozen characters from each other (save his Laurence Olivier, where he dons eyeglasses and a British accent). As for Schofield, while it’s natural enough for her to double Ella Fitzgerald and Eileen’s BFF Rosetta, taking on Monroe’s real-life acting coach Paula Strasberg is a bit jarring. True, Strasberg’s Whiteness is not a factor in Marilyn, Mom & Me, so on the surface it’s like casting a Black man as Hamlet (whose Whiteness is a non-issue); but because both Ella’s and Rosetta’s Blackness very much is an issue in a thready civil-rights subplot, it taxes our suspension of disbelief when Schofield walks onstage affecting a stereotypical “New York Jewish accent” (“Mar-i-lyn, boobala, dahr-ling!”). Would we be comfortable with a White actor playing a real-life Black person, complete with stereotypical “Southern Black accent”? Is there a difference? Why not just expand the cast a bit?

It’s probably no coincidence that the best performance is by Soper, the one actor who’s confined to a single role and era. However much her Marilyn is part caricature, she does reasonably well with it and definitely looks the part. Also, the one real laugh I got from this “personal comic drama” (ICT press release) is when Marilyn has an intentional wardrobe malfunction in front of a press gaggle. Yet it was a full three or four seconds before the audience reacted, despite its being perfectly played by Soper. Very strange. 

Then again, it was a strange audience. Although they ate up most of Yankee’s jokes and seemingly felt what he wanted them to feel, at the same time they were the most profoundly disrespectful of any I’ve seen at International City Theatre (whose audiences are typically good ones), what with the texting and watching of videos and checking of Facebook every five minutes, the talking loudly enough to be heard from across the theater, the cell phones beeping and ringing left and right, the tinkling of bracelet bells, the crinkling of plastic bags and the constant eating of potato chips. I don’t know who these people were, and I don’t know what they saw in Marilyn, Mom & Me, but this is far from the first time I’ve been a stranger in a strange land.

Marilyn, Mom & Me at International City Theatre
Times: Thurs-Sat 8:00 p.m. and Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through March 3.
Cost: $49-$52
Details: (562) 436-4610, ICTLongBeach.org
Venue: Beverly O’Neill Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach