Speculations at Marylebone Theatre: Cloth-eared Marilyn Monroe conspiracy play
Evening Standard · Nick Curtis ·
Another Marilyn and the Kennedys show hits London, with less than compelling results
To have one crappy conspiracy play about Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys in London in 2026 may be regarded as a misfortune. To have two looks like carelessness. But lo, hard on the heels of Who Killed Marilyn? in August (a record zero stars from me) comes this fractionally less meretricious talkathon by Torben Betts, directed by none other than Trevor Nunn. The man who ran the RSC and the National and helped shape the modern musical is now doing hack work in Marylebone.
Hoary old theories about MM and JFK being rubbed out by the Mob - he for stymieing their activities, she for writing about it in her diaries – are rehashed in three clumsy, exposition-freighted conversations. The main one involves showbiz journalist and TV light entertainer turned investigative journalist Dorothy Kilgallen (the estimable Janie Dee, somehow embroiled in this rubbish alongside Nunn).
It’s 1965 and young black woman Flo (Gloria Obianyo, retaining some dignity against the odds) seeks work babysitting Dorothy’s young son to help her mother care for her brother, who is suffering post-Vietnam PTSD. Entirely improbably, Dorothy promptly reels off the entire thesis of her new manuscript which unveils the shadow ties between the Kennedys, organised crime, Cuba, JFK’s supposed killer Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald’s own killer Jack Ruby, old uncle Tom Cobley and all.
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