Pucker up your lips - here comes Marilyn!

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Downstage Theatre - Media Release
Released 12/02/2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pucker up your lips - here comes Marilyn!

Award winning show MARILYN: FOREVER BLONDE opens at Downstage on 26 March

DIRECT FROM AMERICA - experience two hours of intimacy with the actress who convinces you that she really is Marilyn Monroe. This is not an impersonator, but award-winning American actress Sunny Thompson, reprising the role that has heightened her to star status in America. In Boston reviewer Howie Green wrote: “I know that Marilyn Monroe died 45 years ago. I know that, BUT no one is going to convince me that the woman I spent 2 hours watching on stage last night was not Marilyn Monroe. I saw Marilyn Monroe.” New Zealand producer Stewart Macpherson was at that same performance and concurs.

Playwright Greg Thompson has created a theatrical vehicle for his wife Sunny, entirely from the words of Marilyn Monroe, incorporating many of her most famous songs, including the world-famous classic “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”.

It is 1962 and Marilyn Monroe is in the midst of a photo shoot. She is 36 years old and while she is still beautiful, she has lost a little of the girlish charm of her early twenties that made her one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Divorced for a third time and living alone, frustrated by glamour and glitter and tired of the label “sex symbol”, Marilyn longs to be respected for her talent. She wants to be loved for who she really is rather than the character she has created for the silver screen and wonders what it would be like to do it all over again. So she takes us on this retrospective of her life, until …

MARILYN: FOREVER BLONDE opens at Downstage Theatre in Wellington on Wednesday 26 March at 7.30 pm and has a limited season until mid-April before returning to the USA for more performances. Ticket prices range from $49 for a full price ticket, $39 for groups and concessions, $34 for Downstage members and $25 for a student standby ticket. Tickets can be purchased online, at Downstage’s box office or by phone at 04 801 6946.

For performance dates, more information about the show and the venue please visit Downstage’s website at www.downstage.co.nz or the newly established Downstage Theatre Blog at www.downstagetheatre.blogspot.com, or alternatively www.stetsongroup.com or www.marliynforeverblonde.com.

MARILYN: FOREVER BLONDE is directed by Stephanie Shine, Artistic Director of the Seattle Shakespeare Company.

ENDS

This press release and additional media material on the show are available to download at www.downstage.co.nz/media

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