‘But how did Marilyn Monroe really die?’ is not necessarily a question you’re expecting to have answered down the theatre in 2026, especially not via the medium of a play starring late ‘00s pop star Pixie Lott.
But here we are. Sharleen Cooper Cohen’s drama – conspiracy thriller, even – opens with Lott’s extremely breathy, extremely blonde Marilyn hovering near the bed where her body was found. She tells us we don’t really know the real her, and to prove it she drops an F-bomb (Marilyn Monroe did swears???) and takes us on a whirlwind tour of her life.
Not a very illuminating one. In part because Lott’s limitations as an actor leave her stranded doing what amounts to a Monroe impression and in part because Cohen clearly thinks subtext is for cowards there’s simply no depth of character here. A ‘real’ Marilyn is constantly alluded to, but her whole life still seems like a performance. Everyone talks in exposition. Lott’s Marilyn never does anything casual or insignificant. The stilted dialogue is simply a cavalcade of modestly interesting facts about her career, marriages and death.
And then there’s the conspiracy. Although the fact of Monroe’s death is dropped at the start, Cohen essentially precedes in a purely linear fashion, only revealing how she believes her subject died at the end. Rather than present it in a literary way, Cohen simply trundles through and says ‘this is how it happened’… and then has Marilyn confirm it herself.
Lott’s Marilyn never does anything casual or insignificant
I mean if you want to go down the rabbit hole, there are several competing conspiracies of – as near as I can tell – equal credibility. I don’t think there’s a problem doing a play that takes one as its premise. But having the ghost of Marilyn Monroe unironically tell us that this is all correct is at best gauche and at worst kind of gross.
It’s reasonably stylishly directed by Philip Wm McKinley in a brooding, dark-hued production with nice sound design and an elegant midnight-blue palette (although I found the male actors’ paint-spattered costumes baffling). It is not too far from the vibes of a trashy true-crime doc, and some people will doubtless enjoy it on those terms. But it’s simply not a good drama.
