TO anyone over 30, the personalities of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and

Jackie O continue to exert the most powerful of holds on the

imagination.

Nick Bird's re-examination therefore of the mystery surrounding

Monroe's death has a good deal going for it even before you start to

take his own part into account. Which is plenty. For apart from the fact

that he implicates Jackie as a major player in the conspiracy to silence

Monroe, the President's former mistress, he also has an actress, Ellie

Targett, who not only bears an uncanny resemblance to the former First

Lady but brings her sensitively to life. Dressed in familiar H-line chic

satin suit and pill-box hat, here is an icon revealed -- under pressure

from David Wynn's insistent prosecutor -- as sacrificial lamb, gallant

heroine, and ruthless defender of the Kennedy myth and American way of

life when she sees it seriously threatened.

Less a play and more a dramatic inquisition, Bird's tastes veer

uncomfortably towards the sensational. But such is his command of a mass

of information about the now dubious sexual life-styles of JFK and his

brother and the corruption and dishonesty those facts expose, it makes

for a gripping hour. Over it all looms the extraordinary presence of

Monroe (a stunning series of blow-ups) reminding us of the unique --

half vulnerable, half irresistibly erotic -- quality she had. The

Kennedy era, we now know, was a triumph of image over reality. Happy

Birthday, Mr President is yet another nail in that coffin that will keep

you arguing for hours long after you've left the theatre.