For the first time in 40 years, American playwright Arthur Miller has revisited his turbulent marriage to Marilyn Monroe in an autobiographical play that opens this week in Chicago. 

Finishing The Picture, a fictional portrait of Monroe's emotional disintegration, is based on the creation of her penultimate film The Misfits, for which Miller wrote the screenplay.

Matthew Modine stars as a young writer who is powerless to stop the fragile star's descent into depression and drug addiction.

It is about the tremendous pressure of being one of the most iconic characters of the 20th Century.

In the play, Miller, 88, settles some scores with Lee and Paula Strasberg, the gurus of method acting who were drafted on to the set of The Misfits to cope with Monroe's mood swings.

They divorced the month the film was released in 1961.

It was her third divorce. A year later, Monroe died at 36 from an apparent overdose of sleeping pills.

She was shooting her last movie, Something's Got to Give, at the time.  

(CRIENGLISH.com)

playwright: one who writes plays; a dramatist（劇作家，寫劇本的人）

penultimate: next to last(倒數第二的)

guru: a recognized leader in a field[權威,（宗教）領袖]