The Unremarkable Death of Marilyn Monroe, Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond

STREWN across a bed on the stage, a dishevelled blonde lay face down next to a telephone.

Discarded undergarments, shoes, bottles and potions littered the space around her and seemed symbolic of her shambolic emotional state. This was confirmed when she rose and confessed to the audience in her signature breathy tones that she had been “a little down lately”.

Lizzie Wort took on the task of bringing the iconic movie star to life for what playwright Elton Townend Jones postulates may have been Marilyn’s last hour alive. The writer describes her as a “fascinating and beguiling woman”, yet this portrayal presented her as shallow, insincere and completely self-obsessed.

Pacing around the stage, popping pills and regaling the audience with a series of anecdotes, Marilyn, or "Noodle" as she referred to herself, told of her difficulties with period pain, miscarriages, IBS, skin problems and insomnia.

Racked with anxiety at living up to her image, I hoped in vain to see a glimpse of the “real” Norma Jean instead of the affected starlet.

There were brief moments when a hush fell on the house at the stories of her mother’s mental illness and the horrifying rape she experienced at the age of eight. Yet Marilyn herself brushed them off as lightly as her affairs with the powerful men of the time and as carelessly as her three marriages. A twisted facial expression from time to time was the only clue that this was a woman ready to break down – but rather than engender compassion, it somehow added to the effect of a self-pitying, dependent, dull woman clinging onto her image with one hand yet claiming to resent it on the other.

When Marilyn finally flopped for the pills and booze to take their effect, it felt like a relief, both for her and the audience.

Christina McIntyre