A new musical, Misfits Together, will explore the marriage of Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, aiming to give a nuanced and intimate portrayal rather than the caricature of "the hourglass and the egghead" that greeted their 1956 union. Written by Bastille's Dan Smith and To Kill a King's Ralph Pelleymounter, with a book by Charlotte Bogard Macleod, the show frames both figures as trailblazers and draws parallels between America's 1950s "red scare" and political tensions today, making it more than a conventional celebrity biopic.

The production opens next autumn at Leicester's Curve theatre, directed by the venue's artistic director Nikolai Foster, and is presented with Tila Arts. Its title references The Misfits, the film Miller wrote for Monroe released shortly after their 1961 divorce, and Smith and Pelleymounter have recorded the score as a studio album, with lead track Oh America out on Thursday. The creators wrote more than three dozen songs before narrowing them down, and the musical also features figures such as Laurence Olivier, while examining how Monroe's fame eclipsed Miller's and how she was persistently underestimated despite her achievements, including running her own production company.