“People remember the moments,” rather than the particulars of a performance, says the actor Marlene Dietrich in the play Marlene put on by ExPats Theatre. No one cares about the plot or performances of a movie (or a stage play), she claims, so long as the hero is able to capture her audience’s attention with a mere glance or the way her cape flows behind her.
Marlene has a bit of a formless and forgettable plot, and unfortunately the real-life Dietrich is not on hand to provide such indelible moments. Actor Karin Rosnizeck gamely depicts the iconic star and neatly handles some tricky accent work, but at the end of Dietrich’s legendary legs were some extremely large shoes to fill, and the shoe doesn’t quite fit here.
The show opens backstage at a Paris theater as Marlene prepares to take the stage for one of her final performances. Her assistant Vivian (Valerie Adams Rigsbee) and the theater’s maid Mutti (Hilary Kacser) race around in a tizzy, trying to get the dressing room up to the headliner’s exacting standards. When the icon turns up, she is a tempestuous presence, snapping at the staff, reminiscing about her glory days, and placing outrageous orders of bouquets so she’ll appear to have legions of admirers. Her relationship with Vivian changes on a dime from tender and even flirtatious to outraged and authoritarian, and the most thrilling part of the production is watching that ambiguity and potentially queer storyline play out.
Part of the trouble with Marlene is that it can’t decide whether it’s a comedy or drama, a memory play or a musical, and it’s almost totally devoid of dramatic tension. The tone of the play shifts with each of the actors’ mood swings; Marlene’s addresses to the audience and the other characters are mostly streams of consciousness. Though these go in some interesting directions, they often lead to dead ends and fail to have a larger dramatic thrust. Marlene experiences some minor tribulations, including some self-doubt and a leg that, at one point, collapses beneath her, but these are moved past quickly.
The show is ostensibly a musical, but the first full song comes during a sequence midway through the run time, and the rest are packed at Marlene’s final concert at the end. Any buildup and backstage fretting that led up to that point fizzle out immediately. Rosnizeck performs the final songs well enough and deftly switches between singing in different languages while maintaining her German accent, but what could probably be one triumphant final number instead stretches to five—an awfully long time for anyone but a screen siren from Hollywood’s golden age to hold a room’s focus.
The set, designed by Tennessee Dixon (also in charge of projections), includes a screen that at times hosts projections and at others is illuminated from behind to show the action in the hallway outside the dressing room. In one segment Marlene describes her life in Germany in the 1930s—recounting the county’s depression, the rise of fascism, and the creation of concentration camps—as a video projection shows women in the countryside moving rocks and rubble. A pile of similar rubble that has inexplicably laid in front of the screen for the duration of the show is now put to use as Mutti starts lugging the rocks across the stage, a compelling set piece that nevertheless fails to connect to the overall play.
You couldn’t ask for a more compelling subject than Marlene Dietrich, so it’s unfortunate that the script leaves one wondering what the point of the story was. Despite that, there are some hints of a more fully formed or unexpected picture of the icon. Rosnizeck very much looks the part, and the costumes by Donna Breslin help to construct the image of the diva, and so there is the bit of the feeling of seeing some previously unknown behind the scenes footage of Dietrich. A recurring bit about Marlene always cleaning her surroundings leads to several good comedic moments. It’s a kick to see the screen siren harrumphing around the stage with a broom and getting down on her knees in a suit skirt to wipe up the perceived dust, and those are the moments worth remembering.
ExPats Theatre’s production of Marlene, written by Pam Gems and directed by Vanessa Gilbert, runs through Oct. 20 at Atlas Performing Arts Center. expatstheatre.com. $24.25–$52.75.