When Smash, the television series about the production of a Broadway
play about Marilyn Monroe, first aired last year, I watched the first two
episodes and then stopped. The main reason I tuned it out was that I am highly
critical of impersonations of Marilyn. Unless they are so spot-on it’s amazing,
I’m left cold. It seemed to me that the two actresses vying for the part of
Marilyn, Karen (Katharine McPhee) and Ivy (Megan Hilty), were playing a caricature
of Marilyn instead of the real woman.
After much cajoling by my ex-husband to watch the rest of
the season, I relented, and I just finished watching all 15 episodes. While I
still have a problem with some of the scenes and numbers involving Marilyn,
there has been a progression to a more truthful representation of her.
McPhee and Hilty are both excellent actresses and have
fantastic voices, but their Marilyns are far different. Hilty looks more like
the somewhat zaftig Marilyn of the late 1950s, while McPhee calls to mind the
thin, elegant Marilyn of 1962. I couldn’t help thinking they should have Ivy
play Marilyn in the first act, and Karen play her in the second act.
The soapy plot lines and relationships are outlandish but
fun. Jack Davenport is terrific as Derek, the director who’s charming when he’s
bedding every leading lady in sight and tyrannical when faced with
incompetence, as he far too often is. Anjelica Houston is great as usual as the
beleaguered first-time producer trying to emerge from her producer-ex-husband’s
shadow.
Debra Messing shows acting range she never got to display
on Will & Grace as the
co-songwriter tortured by her feelings for, and former and present affair with,
the actor playing Joe DiMaggio.
Sometimes the writers substitute dramatic impact for
common sense. Would any director allow a musical to end with the protagonist’s quiet
death? Surely someone would have noticed the problem prior to the opening in Boston. And as good as
Uma Thurman was as Rebecca, the movie star they bring in to play Marilyn, she
looks so unlike her in face and body that I doubt any real producer would have
countenanced her hiring.
But Smash is a
show that asks for a suspension of disbelief, and after watching season one, I’m
willing to give it that. It’s too much fun not to!
Season Two of Smash begins with a two-hour premiere
on Tuesday, February 5.
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