In Toronto, the Emerald Theatre's new production Who Killed Marilyn? offers a controversial take on the American icon Marilyn Monroe. The show arrives as Canadian stages increasingly turn to U.S. biographical subjects, reflecting the close cultural ties between the two countries. Audiences here may compare it with recent American‑focused productions at the Stratford Festival, which have sparked similar debate.
Production details
It was the mob, on behalf of the Kennedy clan. There: now you don't need to see this tawdry and irredeemably awful trawl through Marilyn Monroe's life and last moments, which rehashes various well‑known conspiracy theories as if they were new. Purporting to reclaim Marilyn as a talented actress and an independent woman rather than a victim, it in fact ploughs the same prurient, necrophile furrow that countless ghouls have explored since she died aged 36 in 1962.
A pouting, posing, peroxide‑helmeted Pixie Lott narrates Marilyn's story in a parody of her breathy tones. Sharleen Cooper Cohen's script invariably tells us things rather than shows us. If Marilyn hadn't died of an accidental overdose (the official story) or one deliberately administered up her bum by a bulb enema (the "truth") she'd be DOA here, from exposure to exposition.
An almost all‑male bunch of stiff supernumeraries mill menacingly around Lott in inexplicably paint‑spattered costumes, stepping forward to take on crassly caricatured versions of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, Mafia boss Sam Giancana and so on. The American accents are generic or inaccurate. The impression of Laurence Olivier is even worse. The under‑rehearsed cast trip over each other's lines and gesticulate like traffic policemen.
Direction and staging
Philip WM. McKinley stages the action around a bed which is cumbersomely rotated by the cast while other bits of set are latched onto and unlatched from it. Scumbled versions of famous images, that calendar nude, that upskirt shot from The Seven Year Itch, are projected onto the back walls. The Emerald Theatre, formerly a cabaret venue and nightclub, has all the atmosphere of a morgue. Perhaps that's why it was chosen as the place to dig up Marilyn's corpse for another go‑around.
It doesn't particularly matter that Lott's angular face and slim figure are nothing like Marilyn's. But she's chosen, or been directed, to fall into a knock‑kneed, bottom‑out, boobs‑hoiked "s‑curve" stance whenever she's not reclining like an odalisque. So horrific elements of Marilyn's life, like her demented grandmother's attempt to smother her as an infant, are related in a pinup pose. Ditto her professed love of French and Russian literary classics and her improbable fascination with Cuban politics.
Lott seems to have only two modes of expression as Marilyn, eyelash‑batting flirtation and screaming anxiety. She's done quite a bit of TV acting and a stint in Breakfast at Tiffany's in the West End in 2016, but on this evidence she shouldn't give up her day job as a pop star.
The usual marker points of Marilyn's life story are laboriously ticked off. Her miscarriages and abortions. The domestic violence she suffered from baseball star Di Maggio. The incongruous romantic match with Arthur Miller, for whom she converted to Judaism. ("She smells like a lavender field," the writer tells Olivier and another man in a frank discussion of what his wife is like in bed, ewwww!)
We're told she was a perfectionist, a shrewd producer, but also chronically late and insecure. Booze and pharmaceuticals numb the pain of belittlement and sexual exploitation, including by Giancana. She sings Happy Birthday to horndog Jack Kennedy and shags him before he offloads her on Bobby. "A brother's sloppy seconds," grins a nameless FBI goon, double‑ewwwww!!
In her centenary year, Monroe is also the subject of a fine National Portrait Gallery exhibition and an intriguing biography by Andrew Wilson. Her fascination remains undimmed, but there's a nasty strand in the countless works made about or around her that glories in her martyrdom, and in the endless reiteration of her tribulations (see also: Judy Garland). This show is a particularly egregious example. I saw it the night before opening night but I can't believe it will have become any less crass and inept since then. Unfortunately our online content management system does not allow for zero‑star reviews. If it did, this would be my first. Boop‑boop‑be‑do.