The Lebanese side of Marilyn Monroe proves her universality

BEIRUT: Marilyn Monroe is one of the 20th centurys great icons, but what would happen to the screen siren if you took her out of Hollywood and placed her in Beirut?

Marwa Khalil and Raia Haidars play Who Killed Marilyn? now at the Monnot Theater, explores the consequences of giving the 50s sex symbol a Lebanese face.

We wanted to talk about women, Haidar told The Daily Star. At first I wasnt convinced about using Marilyn as [she is] such a clich. But then we put her in a Lebanese context, and used her to talk about how society and people look at other women.

The play revolves around the 1962 death of Marilyn Monroe, and the suspicion that she might have lived and been killed in Lebanon. As a foreign investigator comes to town who, throughout the play, never appears but is spoken to several local characters from Marilyns life recount their own views and versions of her fate some even confess to killing.

Haidar and Khalil co-wrote the play, and because we are both actors we wanted to act as many of the roles as possible. They ended up the only actresses in the play, taking turns to perform each role. This is when it became interesting for us as we started developing the characters. Who could be interesting in [Marilyns] background and everyday life we found a way to make them very Lebanese, said Haidar.

Nadim Deaibes, the director, adapted the script according to his own vision and to make it more in line with cinematography all set backgrounds are images projected on a screen.

We were working with our perception of the female figure. We took a huge icon and tried to make a parallel with our lives here in Lebanon. There are two sides of Marilyn Monroe the one we see in the pictures and the real person, said Deaibes.

The opening scene is perplexing two maids are cleaning the floor when they suddenly and deliriously begin trying on what we later find out are Marilyns clothes and accessories. A doorbell interrupts the maids frantic mockery of Marilyn, c! utting t he scene, but this isnt the last of the maids in the play ...

Next up is Zouzou, a mechanic who used to be Marilyns neighbor. As Zouzou, Haidar had the audience in stitches as she played the working class rascal recounting his date with Marilyn. When Zouzou tried to initiate sex with Marilyn, her reply was: No! Im a virgin, touched for the very first time! Injecting a bit of Madonna into anything is bound to be successful, and the rest of the script, which is in English, French and Arabic, is also witty and amusing.

In the play, Jackie Kennedy becomes a scorned high-profile Lebanese wife whose husband has cheated on her with Marilyn. She confronts and insults Marilyn, saying she would be cast aside as soon as her husband grew bored of her. The character of Jackie O is significant because Haidar performs the role as if she were, in turn, rehearsing for a scene. This seems to symbolize that many Lebanese women feel as if their life is a play and that they are putting on an act according to what is expected of them in society.

It was interesting for us to pick such narrow characters and bring them to the extreme with the way they walk, the way they talk, the things they say, said Haidar. Clich was the base of our work and we tried to show it using everything thats not clich.

This is evident in that much of the storyline contains bizarre and comical events relayed by stereotypical Lebanese characters.

The foreign investigator questions a Hollywood director, who criticizes Marilyn for her forgetfulness, moodiness and her diva-like behavior. He says, Marilyn cant differentiate between fantasy and reality.

Khalil explained that the director is supposed to depict the brutality of the film industry at the time, as cinema made her Marilyn and made her dye her hair blond. She became an image without a soul.

The next character in line is not totally fictitious either. It is Gladys Baker, Marilyns mother, who is depicted as a narcissistic Lebanese mother obsessed with physic! al appea rance and plastic surgery. Her proudest moment was when, in her youth, she was crowned Miss Lebanon. She now spends her days in a psychiatric hospital. Baker did indeed suffer from mental illness, which led Marilyn Monroe to spend much of her childhood in foster care.

There are lots of narcissistic Lebanese mothers who want their daughters to be beautiful because they look at her and say Oh this is my daughter, shes beautiful, so therefore I am beautiful! said Khalil.

Gladys ramblings are funny, particularly when she imagines herself giving a speech after winning the Miss Lebanon beauty pageant as, every so often, she proclaims, Vote for Jeita!

Finally, Marilyn is depicted lying on her bed in a traditional Lebanese home, identifiable by the architecture and furniture. Marilyns two maids discover that she is dead, and no sooner do they collapse in grief than it dawns on them to steal her clothes, jewelry and accessories.

The jealous maids panic when they hear the doorbell a link to the plays first scene and they deal with the foreign investigators queries by insisting that It is very normal for [Marilyn] to be missing for a week ... Her life is very complicated.

In between each characters monologues or dialogues, Marilyn herself is revived in her best-known moments, such as when she infamously sings Happy Birthday Mr. President to JFK. In one of the last scenes, Haidar and Khalil are dressed identically in blond wigs and the white flowing dress that notoriously billows in the wind.

I want to know the truth! one says. I want to know who killed me!

I killed you! replies the other, alluding to rumors that Marilyns death was in fact a suicide.

Marilyn was actually very profound, and we repeat that she is looking for the truth. In Lebanon the truth has its own specific connotations but Marilyn was indeed looking for her truth, said Khalil. We are showing the cruelty she experienced through these characters men saw her as a sex symbol, directors saw her as a mo! neymaker , her mother didnt raise her well, [and] the frustration and envy of the maids [also represents the way society viewed her].

Khalil, Haidar and Deaibes have used one of Hollywoods most mysterious and emblematic figures (the image that Marilyn conjures in most of our minds is quite general and mostly a clich) as well as the most stereotyped Lebanese characteristics to illustrate the notion that we all have a sometimes conflicting public and a private life and identity.

It is true that its a clich even to say that Marilyn was misunderstood, especially when it came down to establishing an identity for herself. However, if you look beyond the obvious something Who Killed Marilyn? asks audiences to do you may be able to draw more similarities with her life than you think.

Who Killed Marilyn? is at the Monnot Theater until Dec. 18. For more information, please call 01-421-875.