The Marilyn Conspiracy was co-written by Vicki McKellar and Guy Masterson. Directed by Guy Masterson, it was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 2018 and is now at the Park Theatre in London. It runs from Thursday 20th June to Saturday 27 July.
This play is based on conspiracy theories about Marilyn Monroe ‘s death on 4th August 1962 aged 36. The theory being, that Marilyn Monroe was murdered and did not commit suicide and that the Kennedy family were somehow involved because Monroe was having affairs with JFK and his brother Bobby and she was threatening to go public about it.
The action takes place in a 50’s styled living room on slowly revolving stage. We first hear real radio footage from the time when Marilyn’s death was announced.
The play dramatises the shocking events of Marilyn’s last days laying bare on stage the five missing hours between Marilyn’s death, and the reporting of her apparent suicide by ‘drugs overdose’ to the police.
The dramatisation imagines those missing hours, where seven of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘friends’ gather together to figure out what to do and rewrite what happened before alerting the public to her death.
Genevieve Gaunt’s casting as Marilyn is fantastic. Her portrayal of the Hollywood bombshell is flawless even down to the famous hourglass figure. The flashback scenes where she portrays Marilyn in the run up to the inevitable event are convincing of a paranoid woman pushed to the edge because of her association with the Kennedy brothers.
If this was today, and if indeed there is any truth to these conspiracy theories, maybe she would be alive and writing a tell all book like Stormy Daniels and the president would be held accountable for his lies and coverups.
This play runs at Park Theatre in London from Thursday 20th June to Saturday 27 July. To book tickets, please visit this link.
