Pixie Lott's Monroe Play Panned in London Review
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- Who Killed Marilyn? by Sharleen Cooper Cohen, starring Pixie Lott, runs at London's Emerald Theatre until 29 October and recycles familiar conspiracy theories about Monroe's death at age 36 — including overdose, a Kennedy family contract killing, mafia involvement, and a possible enema the night she died.
- Lott's performance captures the visual hallmarks (blond hair, red lipstick, white pedal-pushers evoking The Seven Year Itch) but the reviewer says she keeps 'striking Marilyn-esque poses' without giving any true sense of the woman beneath the iconic exterior.
- The supporting cast — Henry Proffit as Joe DiMaggio, Ben Dilloway as Arthur Miller, Mars Sams as JFK, Paul Kane as Bobby Kennedy — is dismissed as 'wooden' with 'no uncanny resemblances,' and a sex scene with JFK ends with his backache in what the reviewer calls 'accidental farce.'
- The play skips Monroe's first marriage (which the reviewer calls 'potentially more illuminating') and gives only 'drive-by glances' at her pre-Marilyn identity as Norma Jeane, her orphanage childhood, family history of mental instability, and psychiatric unit experience.
- Director Philip Wm McKinley stages a bed-centred set that doubles as both death site and 'overused motif for the life of a sex symbol,' and the reviewer concludes that while the titular question gets an answer, 'the bigger mystery of who Monroe was remains entirely untouched.'
Why it matters: The reviewer brands the production 'drama school end-of-year show' quality, suggesting that even a celebrity casting like Pixie Lott cannot rescue a script that the source judges as recycling hackneyed sex-symbol tropes instead of exploring Monroe's pre-icon identity as Norma Jeane — the very gap the play's title implies it will address.
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