Prospect Theater Project

Lee Marvin is the third premiere at the Prospect of a play by award-winning playwright Nick Zagone from Portland, Oregon. In 2001, the Prospect mounted Zagone’s Congresswomen and in 2002, his Our LA Man From Vegas.

There’s a special thrill in participating—as actor or audience—in a new play’s premiere. For the actor, it’s the challenge of learning the role as it’s being written, with adaptations—additions, deletions, revisions in script and staging—taking place throughout the rehearsal period. For the audience, it’s seeing a playwright’s creativity unfolding, observing a play whose text is not yet frozen in print.
Lee Marvin is a riff on a world—Hollywood—where fantasy largely consumes and replaces reality, making more of its characters than they are in real life. In the play one meets a dying Lee Marvin, still a hard guy but ruing lost chances; a failed priest; and Michelle, Lee’s longtime companion and adversary in the infamous lawsuit that introduced the “palimony” doctrine to modern day divorce law. At one point, the voice of Barbra Streisand intrudes from offstage.

What is the play “about”? Most likely, about choices. About the choices a man makes and what comes from them. About old gods failing, and the replacement gods unable to carry their load before their supplicants, because the new gods are just as human and fallible as those who worship them.

Better yet, though, you should come and see and decide for yourself. That’s what the playwright would want you to do.