Photo credit: Helen Maybanks
Speculations
by Torben Betts
Marylebone Theatre, 31 Park Road, London NW1 | until 17 January 2027.
⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
“Conspiracy theory play.”
Should you find yourself needing a turkey for Christmas look no further – this dreadful play by Torben Betts will fill the void in your life assuming it survives until January 17. It was possibly the best reason for leaving at the interval I have ever been confronted with, albeit that is something I cannot do. It managed, among other things, to render the usually enchanting Janie Dee, lumbered with a dowdy brown wig, practically invisible throughout which is surprising because she instigated the production directed by Trevor Nunn. It could have been anybody pretending to be Dorothy Kilgallen, an American columnist, investigative journalist and fixture on What's My Line in the Kennedy years, one of those people famous in America but relatively unknown here. Apparently, Kilgallen had views on the death of Marilyn Monroe, the involvement of Bobby Kennedy in it, the death of President Kennedy at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the involvement of the Mob in it all. Her alleged work on these topics did not survive her death from a drug overdose aged 52 in 1965.We meet her first after receiving a threatening phone call when she interviews a new nanny for one of her sons, a young coloured woman who, surprise, surprise, would love to be a journalist and the pair duly conduct a rambling conversation about Kilgallen's work interspersed with scenes from the visit Bobby Kennedy allegedly paid to Monroe on the night she died to try to get her not to publish her diaries, and between a New York Mafia boss persuading Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate John F Kennedy, also one of Monroe's lovers. The cast toil hard but when it comes to playing people who have famous images like Monroe any actress is on a hiding to nothing. Norma Jean may, when confronted with Bobby Kennedy demanding her diaries, have behaved as she does in the play but since Natalie Dunne is not physically in the least like her nothing rings true. The same goes for Jolyon Coy who plays Bobby. On the other hand, the people one does not know - like the Mafia boss persuading Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK - are another matter. Ferdy Roberts has a wonderful time being thoroughly evil, while as Flo, the naïve nanny, Gloria Obianyo is also very good. Flo is a fictional character, everyone else is a real person and the doubts about Kilgallen's death are not by any means new although the finding at the time was that it was an accidental overdose.
The set is handsome, if not particularly convincing given the way the Kilgallen living room or study is laid out but there is a reason. The slanting side walls are on revolves which duly turn to transform the room into Monroe's bedroom, an impressive effect once but there is a law of diminishing returns. We live in a world of conspiracy theories and people one knows not who doing malicious things by computer which upset everyday life so there may be an audience for a play about conspiracies which may, or may not, have happened. That the Kennedy brothers were open to having their public images tarnished if the truth about how they behaved got out is certainly true and the events which followed JFK's assassination have spawned countless theories. There is possibly a play there to be written about Kilgallen's place in all this, but this is not that play which, as so often with a Trevor Nunn production, proceeds at a soporific pace. The conspiracy theories and that she was murdered were set out in a book by Mark Shaw – The Reporter Who Knew Too Much – published in 2016 and it is certainly true that a lot of people involved in the assassination did die in suspicious circumstances.
Cast
Janie Dee – Dorothy
Joseph Coy – Bobby
Natalie Dunne – Norma Jean
Gloria Obianyo – Flo
Ferdy Roberts – Carlos
Creatives
Director – Trevor Nunn
Set & Costume Designer – Lee Newby
Lighting Designer – Johanna Town
Sound Designer – Gregory Clarke
Wig Supervisor – Helen Keane
Fight & Intimacy Director – Tarit Dor
