It all starts so innocently. Marshall, hanging out by his trailer, sat behind a typewriter, scribbling on some paper. Just another day in the life of a young writer.
He’s a bit of an oddity inside Temple Studios. Only there because of Wendy. Not an actor. Not part of the machine. I guess he’s hoping to catch a break, but he doesn’t really show any signs of trying all that hard… did anyone ever see him actually putting to use the typewriter he was constantly lugging around?
It feels like morning as Frankie comes bounding out towards the trailers, fists up, daring Marshall to chase him. A pillow fight. (More than once I had to duck to avoid being hit as Conor’s Frankie sent a cushion flying in the direction of Studio 8). Frankie stealing whatever it was Marshall was working on, taunting him playfully.
Two young men, horsing around, carefree. This innocence would not last long for either of them.
I didn’t spend much time with Ali or Fionn’s versions of Marshall. In fact, Marshall was a rare case for me as it was specific performers that led me to give the character a chance: James Finnemore for how much I loved watching him dance; Jesse Kovarsky for his emotional pull (I'm sure he was the performer who made me cry the most in there).
They both made it increasingly hard for me not to start a night with Marshall.
Catching those spectacular scenes in the bedroom, with Dolores and Wendy, and only one or two other white masks for company was always an absolute privilege.
Stood beside one of the pillars facing the bed, holding the curtain out of your face, you were safe from flying feet and hands, but so close that you felt the air move in rushes as Marshall and Wendy fought in front of you. You could hear their intakes of breathe.
Jesse’s Marshall would crash into the pillar, his troubled face, for a moment, just centimetres from yours.
Joining them at this point you knew Marshall had done something wrong, after all, you just watched him end up in bed with Dolores, kissing up her thighs before their affair was interrupted by the PA.
But you also saw him doubting himself. Realising he’s overstepped the line, that he’s gone too far. His scrawled letter to Dolores, and trying to return the gifted watch. But, it’s already too late and when Wendy is lured in by the PA, he has no chance at reasoning with her. She’s been seeing ghosts all evening already - and the violence in the dance suggests something so broken that it can’t be fixed.
James’ Marshall felt impatient with her, overwhelmed by her anger, perhaps even a little mystified that she was taking it to such extremes. He tried to reason with her quietly but his soft pleading was ineffectual in breaking through. Jesse’s version was more violent, and seemed like he had seen this side of her before, that he knew it well, as she grabbed the candlestick, holding it above her head, running towards the mirrors he’d shout “There she is! That’s the woman I love!”.
Marshall left that room with a need to escape. All he needed was his typewriter, clutched underneath his arm. An escape from the temptation of Dolores, an escape from Wendy’s deepening madness.
Pausing at the pool in Studio 2, he submerges himself, face first, body following, into the water. It’s somehow not-human, unnatural. An attempt at a more permanent escape, or an eerie precursor to the fate that awaits him?
It’s when he comes to the closed gates, his face on the wall “No exit”, that you realise, and he realises, that he is as trapped as everyone else in the nightmare fever-dream of Temple Studios. He won’t accept it at first, typewriter ditched as, like a caged animal, he claws at the gate, trying to find a way over, before he’s dragged back to the ground by the Gatekeeper.
They tussle until he ends up breathless, a note thrust into his hand, “From Dolores”. He’s helpless to do anything but return to her dressing room. It’s now, through the mirror that he comes face to face with his counterpart. Mary, struggling with her own decisions, holding a note from Dwayne. Getting ready for the hoedown.
As he pauses in the staircase, falling against a wall, it’s like he’s trying to convince himself “I have a choice! It’s my choice!”.
I have no idea what, or who he’s choosing in that moment, but for me, it’s not a struggle between two women, but a struggle between him and the studio, he’s unwittingly trapped in a role he never wanted, never asked for. His own eagerness upon meeting the studio’s star being his unthinking downfall.
Perhaps, when Dolores takes him for their joyful dance in the snow room, it’s Marshall trying to get a glimpse into the world that Wendy is part of and he’s just looking at from the outside. Perhaps he’s trying to regain a connection to her, unconsciously letting himself get in over his head. Or perhaps I am being too forgiving. Maybe he just doesn’t care he’s so swept up by the studio’s brightest star and her glittering red dress.
Either way, all ability to make that choice is lost as he steps into the bedroom, finding the PA and her drugged concoction awaiting him. If he’d found Dolores, he may have chosen his own path. But not now.
Their dance of pushing and pulling, of seduction, of transformation (of sprays of aftershave to the crotch), leaves Marshall flat out on the table. Falling, checking himself in the mirror, staggering and obviously under the influence of a powerful drug.
Jesse would come over a little coy, somewhat calmed; whilst James staggered and gained bravado. It becomes obvious with them both that Marshall can see us now. James’ version collapsing at our feet, pulling himself upright and shushing these demons with a finger held to his lips.
Gone are the playful swings at the hanging lights, now there’s shouting into an empty Studio 2 and half-collapsing in spotlights. There’s the invite to the private party rattling along the railings on the stairs. There’s the thrill of being invited.
When he arrives, James’ Marshall is drawn in immediately, his invite held out with an extended arm to whoever is there to take it with not so much as a backward glance. Jesse’s Marshall holds onto it longer, showing it to Dolores, reaching back through the crowd to hand it to one of those who arrived with him. His eyes half-blank whilst his body seems to reach out to the others around him.
Once, a tiny moment, as his finger tips find my hand, dragged softly over my palm before he’s swept up into the grips of the studio.
The private party is hard to watch when you arrive with Marshall. You’re scared for him, whilst his body is half limp and spun from person to person. You can see the triumph in the way Alice presides over proceedings, awaiting the arrival of Wendy.
Finally, it’s him being laughed at, by Alice, by Claude, by Dolores. He was just playing a part. There’s the horror of realisation in his eyes, watching Wendy being dragged away by her friend, as he is contained in the PAs grasp. He should have come to Wendy’s aid a long time ago, when it was her being laughed at as she was taunted at the birthday party, but he was too desperate to fit in. Selfish? Naive? Starstruck?
Jesse’s Marshall, on his hands and knees, retching in the corridor makes me acutely aware, once again, that this somehow wasn’t his choice. Again, I’m hit by waves of sympathy, he’s realising the weight of his actions too late. Too easily manipulated into doing exactly as the studios demanded.
Maybe I only see it like this because I’ve been there with Alice, with the PA, with Stanford. I’ve seen the darkness and their plots. Maybe I shouldn’t blame them, maybe I should hate him more.
But then there’s the Fool, the sinister, mysterious Fool, like a premonition in the darkness of the snow palace, pointing Marshall onwards. The final guiding touch of the studio’s hand.
Marshall’s solo outside the trailer; where he’d previously danced so innocently with Frankie, where he first flirted with Dolores, and where Wendy first become suspicious upon discovering the watch. Jesse had a desperation here, but it’s James’ version that became definitive for me.
The kicking of bark as he span across the floor, the weightless leaps and the way he twisted up and through the caravan window, back out through the door, in one smooth motion. During the final week, this one spin through the window became three, in a moment that looked both effortless and like everything being poured into a performance.
Marshall, on top of the trailer, sacrificial, just as Wendy arrives.
It was always hard to watch as he was dragged up the wood-chipped mound. Me, flinching as he stumbled, slipping back down to my feet. I nearly always lent against a tree, hand on rough bark. Sometimes noticing Alice obscuring herself behind the mask she clutched beside me.
I know Wendy’s story too, and I understand how she reaches this point, but there’s such violence in her stabs. So much blood as Marshall clutches his stomach. Then there’s the moment of realisation on her face, and the way that he falls, so dramatically, out of view.
I’d watch as Wendy looked at the blood on her hands. As Alice framed the scene with hers. As the scissors fell to the floor and Wendy started to move through the crowd, bewildered, distressed. Alice retrieving the scissors, readying herself to start all over again. Then everyone would move on and I’d just be left in the trees as the lights changed, and The Fool rushed past into the bright light of Studio 8.
It’d be dark, and quiet, and then if it were Jesse playing Marshall and you were patient, you’d find a dark shape curling up round a tree next to you. The eerie calls of birds would break through the droning background noise, and slowly, Marshall would start to stir. Waking slowly, unaware of how he ended up in these woods, looking up at the mound. Clutching his stomach, before looking down at it, finding it intact and slowly realising that perhaps, this whole thing, had been a dream.
A bonus favourite-ever Temple Studios moment that I couldn’t shoehorn in elsewhere: On the 30th March (you remember that crazy show, right?), I walked out from Studio 3 to the finale stage, just in time to spot James’ Marshall, stripped to his pants and hopping into one of the pools to take an unexpected bath. (I seem to remember he even had a sponge, but surely not?)
When Wendy and Andrea arrived, Leslie spotted him sat there, with a massive grin across his face, and immediately collapsed in fits of giggles. It. Was. Perfect.
