First posted here on December 28, 2017
Must Close Saturday: The Decline and Fall Of The British Musical Flop, a new book by Adrian Wright, covers Mort Garson’s short-lived 1983 show, Marilyn! The Musical. Despite winning an endorsement from Anna Strasberg, the executor of Marilyn’s estate, the show failed to win over critics and closed after 156 performances. Nonetheless, its talented star, Stephanie Lawrence, won critical acclaim and that year’s Best Actress award from the Variety Club of Great Britain, as well as a nomination for the Society of West End Theatre awards (now known as the Laurence Olivier awards.)
“‘The show was intended as a tribute to another popular icon who died young, but it failed to capture the public imagination,’ Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian. ‘The one person who emerged with credit was Stephanie Lawrence. She not only captured the externals of Marilyn Monroe – the wiggle, the walk, the passionate pout, the vocal breathiness – but conveyed the carmined innocence and soft vulnerability within. It should have been her passport to fame but the show failed to live up to its star.'”
Stephanie’s performance is fondly remembered by Monroe fans, and in 1995, she released an album, Marilyn: The Legend, featuring songs from the musical as well as covers of Monroe tracks.
She also starred in more successful musicals including Evita, Starlight Express and Blood Brothers and acted on film and television, before her untimely death in 2000. Michael Billington described her as “an actress of rare glamour” and “a pillar of British musical theatre,” who nonetheless “never fully achieved the 40-carat stardom that came to her no-more talented peers.”
UPDATE: Undiminished Glamour, Rob Merlevede’s biography of Stephanie Lawrence, was published in 2021.
The Marilyn Archive 
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