The Actress sits at a dressing table. Any wooden chair, any wooden surface, even a plain desk, will do. An empty frame indicates the mirror, and round theatrical lights flank the vacancy. The Actress sits in profile to the audience, like the driver of a car. A slender woman with silver-white hair smoothed back by a headband, her erect posture and taut profile indicate a well-preserved fifty, or sixty, or more. She is very much the theatrical grand dame, yet wears only an oversized, white terrycloth robe . . . a once-white robe. Smudged at the rolled collar and sleeves with greasepaint, the robe's streaks of undiluted lipstick red and eyeshadow blue suggest a dingy American flag. During the monologue, The Actress addresses an unseen someone over her audience-side shoulder as she applies makeup. Note: for theater-in-the-round or more intimate proscenium performances, dressing table and actress can face the audience. In this case, the small, concealed TV screen that news anchors use should be set into the makeup table top, so that The Actress can watch herself to apply the makeup correctly, but in no case should the audience see the final made-up effect full-face forward until the very end. The Actress addresses the unseen interviewer, her voice an aging contralto. Occasionally a breathless, girlish quality emerges.

The Actress: Thank God I didn't die! I was this close. No kidding. Of course, I might as well have died, for all anyone ever saw of me for almost thirty years. Hollywood. After all those years, all that effort, all I took out of there was Maf. Anyway, that's the only thing I wanted when the men dragged me out, my poor little poodle. I couldn't ever stand to see anything left to die, even flowers. That always made my skin crawl, the way some people would just mow them down, all those soft petals, that pretty color. Sometimes I think flowers are souls. You can see them drooping when they don't get enough water. Or too much. Sometimes they get too much water and drown.

I got too much champagne. And pills. I didn't drown that night, though. I floated. Like Ophelia. With flowers.(Giggles.) And I didn't get-thee to a nunnery, though where I went was damn close. (She leans almost into the plane of the invisible mirror, as if checking for facial wrinkles.)God, I look like Carol Channing's grandmother in this light! (Giggles again.) Speak of another Marilyn-come-lately. That was the hardest part, watching the imitators go on and on, and get my parts, just like the gossip and lies and speculation went on and on. That . . . and the deaths. Not Joe, though. Not Mr. Arthur Miller. No, I won't talk about him, them. Only about my work. That's always been the most important thing, my work, and I finally saw that I didn't need someone else to believe in it, if I really did.

You still can't buy it: that I could just vanish like that—not with all my fame and the media attention—-can you? Let's see you in better light, Junior. Lean forward, kid. What are you—thirty-something? Just a baby. Like my boy. You of all people—a grown-up, East- Coast Nineties sophisticate like you—should know how easily the unthinkable can be arranged, how fame can make being forgotten the only thing worth living for. I call this decade my Gray Nineties. That's sometimes how old I feel. How can someone wet behind the years like you know about the things people felt they had to do back then? Jimmy Hoffa vanished forever, didn't he? (Pauses.) I almost did. I almost went away and didn't come back. Ever.

Now—(Her arms sweep wide to encompass the bare dressing room) I'm finally legit. (Laughs.) Me, little Norma Jeane, a stage actress at last, playing the role of a lifetime, of a long lifetime. Ironic, huh? It's never too late. Write that down. It's not the best damn quote you'll ever get, but it's the truest.

Oh, the White House was wonderful, and the First Lady was a doll. The president, though, I think he has a Kennedy complex. He was ogling me pretty good. Poor Peter. Drank himself to death. The Kennedys were a toxic family, you know? Maybe you do. Oh, God. I wish . . . Lee Strasberg could be here to see this, my big comeback, my Broadway debut in the role of the decade. He always said I could be the best on the live stage. Me and Marlon. Marilyn and Marlon. Both of us as dysfunctional as . . . Dostoevski characters. Yeah, I still love the Russian writers. (Coyly.) You must have read a lot about me. How could you not? The Russians had soul. They saw the dinge underneath the daisies, right? Oh, and I wish Michael were here. No, that's not my son's name. You're not going to trick that out of me. He, at least, will have privacy, that's one thing Jackie O and I agreed on.

I was talking about Michael Chekhov . . . you know, Anton's boy. Imagine, I knew him! I studied acting with him when I was a starlet. That's a funny word, isn't it? Starlet. Star-let. Like Scarlett. Made up to make a person sound like less than the real thing. Like an av- i-a-tricks. Don't ask me to spell that. I still don't spell. That's when I hit the key for Spellcheck. Computers make me feel like Walt Disney or something. I still write poetry by hand, though. Nowadays everybody calls themselves "actors," even women. I don't know, I can understand why, but it still sounds funny to me. That's all I ever wanted to be, an actress. I like that word. Ac-tress. But you can call me an actor in your story. I know that's politically correct, and I always had a deep interest in politics . . . . (She laughs at the touch of the old tease in her voice, then sobers.)

Those were terrible times. For me, sure, but for everyone. Think about it. I sure did that a lot during my Black Hole years. No, I won't say exactly where. I'll just say . . . where the wild horses and misfits hide. Someplace lost and lone, where the town drugstore isn't big enough to have movie magazines. That's another dinosaur, like me—movie mags. Those were the rags. Nowadays, they're toney. Vanity Fair! I guess you can't keep an old girl like Gossip down, especially in the print business. It's still the same old shell game, though, with Demi and Michelle and Madonna—don't get me going on Madonna, talk about cheap imitations!—doing cheesecake for the cover, but in their underwear yet! (She shakes her head, beginning to apply the deep- toned, oil-based face makeup that stage lights require, rather like what burn victims wear to hide scars.) Nobody's ever beat my calendar, though! And, back then, they thought it would ruin my career. Instead, it launched Playboy. They used to have that magazine even in my drugstore, but behind the counter under plastic, like Hostess Twinkies that are too rich for you. I really had a great body. (Nostalgically.) Still do, for my age. If I had only known that plastic surgery would do all this science-fiction stuff with lasers and all, I wouldn't have been so worried. Hey, I'm an actress! I don't apologize for keeping the instrument state-of- the-art. (Sobers.)

That's all it was in my day: a body to die for, and when it was gone . . . die. It's still the same, except actresses aren't considered over the hill until forty, instead of thirty. I'm glad I had my awkward years—decades—away from Hollywood. They were right; having a baby does nothing for your figure, but I ran it off later chasing the kid. Nope. It's up to him to come forward. He's not too fond of the press—oops, we say "media" now, don't we? I kept up you know. I can read. I even can act, and that's the one thing I liked reading about when I was missing: how everybody said they underestimated my acting. They never know what they got until it's gone.

(She slaps rouge under and over her cheekbones, then stops to stare at her feverish reflection.) You know, that's one thing I found out in Korea when I entertained the troops on our honeymoon. Wow, that sounds . . . Joe's and my honeymoon. Joe hated my jaunt to the frontlines, but it showed me I could do more than I thought, though I didn't really know it until much, much later. Those boys were so sweet. They were with me all the way, and I was something special to them. Something more than a pinup or a sex symbol. Oh, I was that all right, and I played it to the hilt. Gosh, it was cold! Took real acting talent to wear that slinky spaghetti-strapped dress and not turn into one big goose bump. And those kind of bumps they weren't interested in! But the craziest thing, I wasn't scared! All those men, that sea of faces I couldn't even focus on I was shivering so much, but I didn't freeze or forget. Or stutter. Women seldom stutter, you know. It's a male chromosome thing usually. Unless some youthful trauma kicks in, and my youth was all trauma. That's why I went in for Drama. (Laughs self- mockingly.)

I don't stutter now. When I finally got off the shrinks—and I had to in the outback where I lived all those years—- and got into self-help, that's when I finally understood it, me, after all those years. Attention, of course. I was seeking male attention in an industry where the father figures were studio heads who kept harems of starlets in "stables"like race horses. Ran us until we dropped, or turned thirty. Like Ruffian. (Chokes up.) Only filly to give the boys at the derby a run for their roses, and they overwork her until she hurts herself, and then they kill her. And they don't even pay horses, do they? I was really screwed that way; paid way less than I should have been. Poor Ruffian, one trip-up and . . . kaput. I hated that! I almost came out and bought her then. I could have retired her someplace where she didn't have to run for a place in the sun; my loyal pals saw I got money from all the boom projects after my "death." Ruffian didn't have any loyal pals. How do you suppose they killed her? Didn't shoot her, like in my day. Maybe injection. They did that in my day, too, the studio doctors, tho bozos I paid to keep me awake or asleep or just this side of happy. I wasn't the only "actor" to go nova on shots and inferiority complexes. Judy Garland. A whole bunch of us, especially the "looove goddesses." Yeah, I saw Looove Boat during my sabbatical.

(Briskly, drawing businesslike lines between her eyebrows, down from her nose with dark pencil.) Well, you can't save everything. Your own self is enough is most cases. Who saved me? Who saved me. The Three Stooges, silly! Me. Myself. And I. Just like I made my own career until the people made me a star. And the people kept me alive all this time. Oh, you mean who whisked me out of Brentwood That Night? Who made sure that everyone swore the body was mine, and left it sit for two goddamn days until Joe stepped in like he always did . . . Joe. We shouldn't have married, but people did that sort of thing in those days. Bad publicity otherwise; he was a jerk and she was a slut and her career was over. Now. . . holy Hays Office! All History. All sorts of actresses have babies by themselves (okay, not totally by themselves). They even own their own production companies, like I did then. Actors, I should say. We're all actors now, but the girls still get stripped and knocked around in movies. They say we're like strippers, all of us actor- actresses who need to peel off our clothes to be famous and feel wanted. They say we all were victimized during our childhoods. Can you imagine that? Your own father doing that to you? Now I'm glad I didn't have one and didn't find the one I didn't have. But I think my tattered gold-diggers—in movies, you know, even though I got some bum blonde parts—I think they had more self- respect than what masquerades as women's roles now. I tried to give them that. And it isn't sex, no matter how much skin and how much bedroom action they show now. Smut! they used to call it. Nobody's nice in movies anymore. I used to be naughty, but I was nice.

Oh, you're a media shark, aren't you, Junior! Back to The Question. My son's almost your age, so I'll give you a motherly hint, just as if you were my very own little boy. Who whisked me out of Hollywood and scandal and self-destruction? Do the initials H.H. mean anything to you? And I don't mean Hubert Humphrey!

(Laughs uproariously while dabbing clown white makeup above her age lines.) That your best guess? That's rich, and kinda predictable for a high-class rag like Vanity Fair. But he was married to Jean Peters then, and already pretty reclusive. Had the money and motive, though. Never could resist a sex symbol, though you have to wonder how he was at the real thing . . . No, not Howard Hughes. The other H.H. who was big on sex and stars and calendar girls in those days. Still is. Some boys never grow up. I still could pose for him, and don't think I haven't been tempted to show what born talent and cutting-edge plastic surgery can do. Maybe I should be stuffed when I die, like Trigger. Nobody ever can see enough of natural blondes! (Laughs.) I guess you are pretty young. Hugh Hefner, honey! H.H. He owed me a lot. I was the body that launched a billion issues of Playboy. The first drawing card, even though he had to print that old calendar shot, Golden Dreams. I didn't even need to be air- brushed then. And isn't that a nice development?

Saw a photo of Liz the other day and she looked sixteen again. Skin like National Velvet. I'm doing the cover of Vanity Fair, did you know? Hey, what I can't fix they can take out. They erase the pixies nowadays. You know, those nasty little dots you could see when you looked at news photos real, real close? Yeah, I know they're called pixels, but I like to think the pixies are helping out all the old broads in the world. Say, listen, Liz and Lauren do it, why not me? (Shrugs and begins outlining her eyes in vampish lampblack.) I'll give Hugh credit for never breaking the story, though he kept bugging me to pose. In a wig! Like I used to wear when I wanted to be just me and not Her, not the emmmminent MmmMmm. (Flutters her long, black false lashes.) I always knew makeup was a mask. And, no, it doesn't bother me now slathering it on to look older or uglier.

I really became an actress, you know. Actor. I started on the stage, back at the Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theater in Beverly Hills in nineteen-forty seven and eight. It was after Fox dropped me; I had to do something. So I got the second female lead in Glamour Preferred. Guess what I played. Guess! A silver screen siren! Isn't that a scream? For my first play. Later, they all said that I'd never make it on the stage, not with my neuroses, but they didn't know I did just fine in those early plays. And don't tell anybody, but this isn't really my Broadway debut. Back in '55, I slipped into the Martin Beck Theater for a one-night . . . cameo. Did you think I was going to say one-night something-else? It was Teahouse of the August Moon, so no one would recognize me made up for a bit part. (The Actress pulls her eyes into an Asian slant.) Brando did it, so I sure could! We were both Stanislavski babies. I did my Method work in Manhattan, but after I "died," I practiced in secret for years. Did Little Theater in my little town. Was quite a local celebrity as a brunette. Even did those parts that they gave to my "the nexts" after I was gone, and before I even left. You know, the "next" Marilyn, like the Kim Novak part in Picnic. Now I've come full circle, fronting a Broadway musical, stepping in for a Tony- winning stage star. Adding a bit of zing to a long- running show. Me, Marilyn Monroe.

Do you want to see me do Her? I still can. (Assumes an uncanny pose.) There. What do you think? Good enough to fool a near-sighted man on a donkey, right? I could still be doing her, like Mae West, forever. Except that Mae was always a worldly broad. Heck, she didn't hit the movies until she was forty. Age never seemed to matter with her and her look never changed. It just got . . . thicker.

Marilyn, though, you couldn't age. She wasn't allowed to age. Marilyn was a child molester's dream. I can face it now. That breathy voice, those innocent, inciting wiggles. The giggle. Marilyn appealed to all the men who want some girl who's so easy they don't have to be afraid anymore that women might get something from them. Some girl they can use and who'll come back for more. Who'll beg and whine for what she's earned. Thank God they liberated the slaves! I feel sorry for Her. In a way she died when I took that bad overdose. At least that's when I began to be born again. And what did I have to lose? It already was all gone. They'd written me off as old and uppity. Everybody seemed to want me dead and gone. And I was scared, too scared to act, all broken up, in pieces like that, before the camera. I was getting better, but it got harder. I needed time to be sure my character was coming through. That's why I demanded all those takes, why it took me hours to face the camera. Cameras capture you forever; it has to be just right. You have to look just right, act just right, all at once at the same moment. A film hangs on a bunch of split seconds spliced together. Like a car accident. Imagine if everyday life were like that! It's terrifying.

I'm not scared anymore, not on stage anyway. I'm finally prompt and I don't need prompting. They all acted as if my good film work was magic, like I got it somehow, instead of made it. What did they call me? A "fey, uncanny talent that made love to the camera," that was one quote. Always a freak. They always treated me like a freak. I wasn't supposed to be a star. I wasn't supposed to be ambitious, or read good books, or try to be more than my looks. Sure, I used them. We all did then, still do. Looks are what women have to make up for muscles and male ego: looks and a dumb hope that somebody will see them for what they are beneath the pancake and the push-up bra. Of course, nobody can see past this crap. (Indicates makeup tins.) Sorry, that's not a nice word for Vanity Fair, is it? Got it from my kid. (Smiles.) Got a lot from my kid. Confidence. Yeah. I could do it, do what any woman does. No kidding, that meant a lot. And I got a whole new vocabulary. And started worrying about somebody besides myself, my looks and my career. Later when he was in that pre-teen stage, he thought his old lady was really not with it. (Giggles.) I loved it all, even the PTA. How could I be vain with a teenage son? How could I stay all messed up with Hollywood! He'll be out there tonight, for my Broadway debut, but no one will know who, except him. That's one secret I'll never give the press. He can, after I'm gone, if he wants to. But, you know, I kinda think he won't want to. He's that kind of kid. Man, my son's a man now. I never had a real father, and he didn't either.

It doesn't matter who his father is. It matters who his mother is. And that's me. A mother, jeez. First I had to learn to be my own mother, though, and that took years. He went to Harvard. Yeah. MBA. Nobody messes with my money now, right, honey? I wouldn't remarry. I didn't need any men once I had my baby.

He isn't obsessed to find out who his father was, like I was. Not after I told him everything. He said, "Mom, you need a new generation man in your life." And he is my new generation man. He doesn't need to own me, he doesn't need me to be what I was, not what I can become.

Oh, ho! That's what you're really here for. The father. Who's the father? Sorry, wrong number. It's nobody famous, it's nobody who hung around. It's nobody significant except to me and he, and maybe thee. I was one of those nameless Sixties statistics, a working single-parent. When I had my son, I finally didn't need a father, didn't need Mr. Mayer to like me or Mr. Cukor to have a heart or Mr. Olivier to give me le-gi-ti-ma- cy. As for men, when women get older, a lot of them lose interest and find girls. Men lose a lot more that way, like knowing real people. I don't need romance now to remind me I'm alive. I have my family. My son, my friends in that little place—and not the ones who gave the interviews to Current Affair when I "came out" a few years ago—and my family, my theatrical family, just like I had my film family, Whitey and the other tech people who sympathized and stood by me, even when I had been made into a mess.

(Outlines her lips into an exaggerated bee-sting.) I used to use five shades of lipstick to make up my mouth. I could still do the glamour thing, like my character, poor woman, but I always enjoyed being a slob. Casual. If you look at my old cheesecake pics, you can see that being outdoorsy was my thing. Waves and wind . . .yes, and the wind from a sidewalk grate, you naughty boy for mentioning that! The legs held up, though, without artificial interference. I could still do the legs part, but you'll never see them, not in this show.

I can't regret anything. I even wear underwear now. Have to. I mean, time does have its way with a girl's bottom. I wrk out and all that, but I need a little help. Besides, that underwear thing was just adolescent rebellion. Gave the movie mags something naughty that they could talk about. Whatever happened to them, they used to be so big? What's People and Us? Processed celebrity cheesecake. (By now heavy makeup has transformed her into a glamorous ghoul.) I'm healthy. Only pills I take now are mega-vitamins and anti- oxidents. Say, you're never too young to start. I've got some plastic baggies here . . . try these. I only drink distilled water and maybe a teensy bit of champagne after the opening tonight. Hey, a girl needs a bit of bubble bath and bubbly now and again, at any age! And as I say—-(standing, she pulls on a brunette wig, then strips off robe to reveal a darkly glittering, loose and garish getup that matches her grotesquely exaggerated vamp makeup.) They don't make movies like they used to, so I don't miss 'em.

How do I look? Gee, thanks. I'm supposed to look demented. Wait! I'll do my big curtain line for you. Private preview. Sure, I'm scared, but that's natural. It takes Adrenalin to carry a show for two hours. And wait'll you hear my singing! No more baby-doll voice. Time and lessons liberated a real range and some guts. Maybe not Ethel Merman, but A-okay. (Her voice deepens, her mask of makeup twists into a Medusa face, her hand convulsively clutches her bony chest. She resembles a figure from an Oriental opera, a caricature of an ancient, alien femininity.)

After all . . . "They had voices. They had faces then.

"I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. De Mille. Here comes little ole Norma . . . Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard."

(Smiling, Marilyn Monroe slinks toward the footlights and the audience, an expression of demonic self-absorption on her face, until she drops character to wink at the man from Vanity Fair.)

Sorry, gotta go. I'm never late anymore! Poor Sir Larry nearly went crazy over that, but I almost managed to seduce him anyway. Sleeping with someone was a way of saying I was sorry in those days. I don't do that anymore. Say I'm sorry, I mean. (She winks.)

So thanks for coming. Sorry about your Mom. It's nice you miss her so much. And don't forget! (Her tone is mock-maternal, mock-seductive.) Come back after the show for some champagne, John-John, and we'll talk about your father. Off the record. 'Bye.

(The lights dim, except for a pinpoint spot on the film-still frozen, ultra-feminine mask of The Actress.)