‘Marilyn in Fragments’ in New York

Marilyn in Fragments, cabaret singer Marissa Mulder’s one-woman show (first seen in St Louis in March), is now playing selected dates at New York’s Laurie Beechman Theatre, and has won a rave review from Stephen Holden of the Times.

“In Marilyn in Fragments, a compressed one-hour show at the Laurie Beechman Theater on Tuesday evening, the rising cabaret singer Marissa Mulder wove passages from Monroe’s diaries and 20 songs into a compelling portrait…

Ms. Mulder delivers a theatrical monologue in a stream of consciousness while her brilliant accompanist, Jon Weber, speaking only a few words, plays the role of sympathetic therapist. Their rapport is distilled in a rendition of Tom Waits’s woozy barroom song ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)’ …

Ms. Mulder, wide-eyed and curly-haired, makes a bewitching and slightly scary Monroe, whose name is never mentioned in a narrative devoid of gossip and name-dropping … Her infatuation with movie stardom is reflected in a rendition of ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon’…

Marilyn in Fragments does not aim to please. This downbeat psychological portrait is uncomfortable to watch because the rawness of the performance is so believable … Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt’, the song that sums up the show’s X-ray vision, captures its barely suppressed anguish and despair…”

Marissa Mulder: Fragments of Marilyn

Cabaret singer Marissa Mulder will perform Fragments of Marilyn, a unique tribute blending music from past and present with Marilyn’s own words, at the Gaslight Theatre in St Louis, Missouri tonight and tomorrow (March 18-19), reports STLPublicRadio.

“Marissa Mulder, a cabaret singer, will perform a tribute to Marilyn Monroe in a variety of styles. She said she drew inspiration to do so from a photograph.

‘There was just something about her eyes in the photograph that registered with me,’ Mulder said.

Her performance is unusual in that the music is from all over the place…and different from the style you might normally see in a cabaret club.

‘I’ll be singing songs from Alanis Morissette to George Gershwin to Noel Coward to Nine Inch Nails to Tom Waits,’ Mulder said. ‘It is a musical journey about Marilyn’s life. All of the spoken-word in the show are Marilyn’s words from diaries, recipes, hotel stationery. It is chronicling her inner feelings from joy to sadness.'”