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.
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