Writers: Vicki McKellar and Guy Masterson
Director: Guy Masterson
According to Bernie Taupin’s song lyric, Marilyn Monroe “lived her life like a candle in the wind”. If this is so, the new drama co-written by Vicki McKellar and Guy Masterson investigates the intriguing question of what or who was the source of the gust that snuffed her out. She was found dead at her Los Angeles home, supposedly having taken an overdose of sleeping pills, on 4 August 1962 at the age of 36.
The play intercuts scenes from the final days of Marilyn’s life with scenes of gatherings of her friends and associates in the hours after her death. It is a structure that comes close to strangling the drama, leaving it with few places to go as the characters present the patchy evidence to the audience in excessive detail and the survivors conspire to conceal the truth which, they believe, points to wrongdoings in very high places.
Genevieve Gaunt’s Marilyn is adept as an impersonation of the Hollywood icon, but there are only small traces of the tarnished innocence which her on-screen persona represented. We see a woman who is in full control of her sexual allure and is beginning to realise the power which she holds over the most powerful – her alleged lovers United States President John F (“Jack”) Kennedy and his brother, Robert (“Bobby”), the Attorney General.
Conspirator in chief is Peter Lawford (Declan Bennett) a B-list Hollywood actor more famous for being a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Lawford’s wife Patricia (Natasha Colenso) is the sister of Jack and Bobby and his first imperative is to retrieve Marilyn’s diaries which it is believed not only name names, but contain details of very indiscreet pillow talk. His second imperative is to conceal the full truth about the circumstances of Marilyn’s death from the authorities and, most importantly, the press.
Director Guy Masterson’s production, on an open stage that occasionally revolves and is over-cluttered with furniture, sees seven characters arguing it out and trying to find a resolution. This resembles the denouement scene from a whodunnit, sprinkled with flashbacks to the victim herself. Stretched out to two-and-a-half hours, there is not enough wit in the script nor energy in the staging to sustain interest, while the “murder” method that is suggested is so bizarre that even Agatha Christie might have gasped in disbelief.
Little more than a year after the events depicted here, Jack too was dead, sparking a whole new round of never-proven conspiracy theories. For those who revel in such things, there is much in the play to mull over (and over), but, for the rest of us, this over-cooked melodrama has little to say and it takes far too long in saying it.
Runs until 27 July 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Whodunnit?
I was somewhat surprised to read this review as I had a very different experience of The Marilyn Conspiracy. I found Genevieve Gaunt’s Marilyn, much more nuanced than is suggested by this reviewer. Working in an undeniably patriarchal Hollywood, Marilyn would undoubtedly have been at the mercy of unscrupulous studio bosses, agents and the like and so in many ways, certainly was a vulnerable individual. Despite this, she also continually broke the mould of accepted norms for Hollywood actresses at that time. She stood up for gay rights, women’s rights and civil rights in an industry and society that wasn’t exactly open to these ideas. She was also an early proponent of jogging and worked out with weights (unheard of at the time for actresses keen to maintain the then soft feminine physical ideal). Thus, it seems likely that she was not entirely the helpless waif, as proposed by this reviewer, but much a more complex individual.
The idea that Marilyn’s “tarnished innocence which her on-screen persona represented” was not apparent enough in Gaunt’s portrayal, suggests that the reviewer believes that Marilyn’s on-screen persona was all she was, perhaps perpetuating the somewhat tiresome one-dimensional myth of someone who was so much more than a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued. That is arguably simply the fantasy of those (possibly including this reviewer) who feel more comfortable keeping women in particular boxes, rather than acknowledging that all of us are fluid, context-dependent, unique individuals.
This play clearly doesn’t intend to show us the on-screen Marilyn persona, but offers us another perhaps richer glimpse behind the scenes, into this clever, complicated woman. Watching this production, it’s also hard to see where the idea of Gaunt’s portrayal showing Marilyn to be in “full control of her sexual allure” sprang from either, as there are very clear tendrils of chaos gradually wrapping themselves around her ever more tightly as the play progresses. However, even swimming in the shark-infested waters of a male-dominated Hollywood, Marilyn’s sex appeal was her currency, and so the chances of her not understanding her allure, and the power this afforded her, would seem to be slim. Any portrayal/production that did not reflect this could surely be accused of perpetuating unrealistic and unhelpful female stereotypes and frankly missing the point entirely.
The set, far from being “cluttered” offered enough to represent a room where seven people might realistically gather, but where any less might have courted criticisms of being too sparse. The stage, in the centre of the audience, rotated slowly enough, so as not to disrupt the action but cleverly offering the entire audience a 360 view of the action, not just one section of higher-paying audience members. The suggestion that this play might appeal largely only to conspiracy theorists is laughable. Obviously, those people would already have been steered away from such an enclosed space, by Bill Gates’ microchip!