Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Lydia Wilson, Justin Salinger, Isabella Inchbald, Simon Harrison, Clare Perkins, Jason Barnett.
Pop culture moments tend to stick in the collective memory more than most, even when a person is obviously too young to have witnessed it first hand, the abundance of times it has been watched and rewatched, the stories of its greatness handed down from one generation to the next; pop culture is the ultimate foundation of the 20th and 21st Centuries to which glory has been immortalised in a single snap shot of a camera’s lens.
We all know the moment, the glare in which a celebrity is caught performing their most iconic act of their life, the singular piece of their existence is caught forever and used as both an indictment of their brilliance, or as the proof of their fall to which some will use extensively as their own Muse in creativity.
For Marilyn Monroe arguably the world’s obsession with a true star of her lifetime, the moment came when she breathlessly, some would say provocatively, sang Happy Birthday to the then President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy, at Madison Square Garden in May 1962 in front of a cheering crowd.
A last hurrah, the name and the event so synonymously tied together that Marilyn, the dress she wore, and the glamour of the night are frozen in time, and only supplanted in the minds of ghouls by the news headlines proclaiming that Marilyn was dead.
We might know the moment, but how many of us actually know the story behind it, how it affected others who were in the build up to the iconic, history defining, daring delivery of a birthday greeting.
Sarah Wooley’s artistically captured audio play, Happy Birthday Mr President, widens the lens to show the listener the drama that led to Marilyn Monroe appearing on stage and the often-forgotten players who began the evening’s notoriety and the fallout which, like ripples cast from a stone thrown into still waters.
The composer, lyricist, producer, and writer, Richard Adler had been given the honour of bringing the gala event in New York to its fruition, and along with his wife, British actor Sally Ann Howes, was instrumental in assembling some of the nation’s best loved household names to the party. And yet it is the detriment of the pair’s future, to history perhaps itself as the conspiracy theories behind Marilyn’s death a few short months after, gathered pace because of that one night, that dress, that song, in which she defied the producer’s wishes and sang it in a style that wasn’t in keeping with the evening’s celebrations, but which also made sure the night is frozen in the mind in all who see the film reels and coverage.
Marilyn was an enigma, but as Sarah Wooley shows with grace, she could bring out the worst in people, the worry, the damage wrought to Richard Adler’s own conscious arguably sent him reeling and contributed to his own state of mind being unbalanced as he sought to understand Ms. Monroe’s lack of compliance for one night only.
The play is wonderfully balanced, the sense of history is observed, and Ms. Monroe’s life in that glare is untouchable, unremovable, a fixed point of celebrity status defined in a single song.
We may know the moment, but do we really know the history behind it? To understand we must listen, and in Happy Birthday Mr President listening is a glorious, insightful, and revealing pleasure.
Ian D Hall