Speculations Review: The play by Torben Betts, directed by Trevor Nunn runs at the Marylebone Theatre London to 3 January 2027.
Torben Betts’ new play tackles two questions that have puzzled people for more than half a century. Who shot JFK, and did Marilyn Monroe really kill herself? It also asks a third question – how did Dorothy Kilgallen die? Who? You may well ask. Kilgallen was a journalist who asked the first two questions and was writing a book on the subject when she too mysteriously died, leaving the book unpublished.
The play examines the three deaths imagining three conversations; Marilyn with Bobby Kennedy on the night she died, Lee Harvey Oswald with New Orleans’ godfather Carlos Marcello, and Kilgallen with babysitter Flo Jackson (a fictional character).
Directed by Trevor Nunn, the play is stylish and wonderfully staged. The set revolves seamlessly between the three conversations, creating an intimacy which at one time involves Kilgallen and Jackson eavesdropping on Oswald and Marcello.
Those of you familiar with the assassination of JFK and Marilyn’s apparent overdose, will not be too surprised with the ending, but this is not the main point of the play. Instead of asking who shot JFK, Betts is exploring the importance of journalists asking questions, even if their life like Kilgallen’s is endangered as a consequence.
The debate between Kilgallen and Jackson about whether we should reveal awkward truths is as old as Antigone’s with Creon. Yet it is also most contemporary. In the programme, Betts recounts some of the many journalists who have recently paid with their lives for “getting too close to things powerful people would prefer to remain hidden”.
Both Janie Dee (Kilgallen) and Gloria Obianyo (Jackson) are excellent. Obianyo particularly excels as she vacillates between wanting to be hidden from the truth about a man (Robert Kennedy) she greatly admires, and her need to know the truth. Agatha Christie said, “The world is full of good people who do bad things,” perhaps “great people do terrible things”.
However, I find the interaction between Oswald and Marcello most fascinating. Ferdy Roberts (Marcello) is particularly impressive, controlling the stage without ever leaving his seat, full of brooding menace.
Where the play disappoints is in the interaction between Natalie Dunne (Monroe) and Jolyon Coy (Kennedy). There is a lack of development here. I lost track of how many times Kennedy asks for Marilyn’s diaries. Also, there is little sense of the enormous presence of two of the most famous and powerful people in the 1960s.
The play concludes with tragic inevitability, just as it would in the time of the Ancient Greeks. Sadly, despite the intervening millennia it is still as relevant now as it was then. What plays about current powerful people will we be performing 60 years from now?
Speculations at Marylebone Theatre
Speculations by Torben Betts, directed by Sir Trevor Nunn runs at Marylebone Theatre, London from 30 October 2026 to 3 January 2027. For more information read our Speculations preview.
Cast: Janie Dee (Dorothy Kilgallen), Jolyon Coy (Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby); Natalie Dunne (Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean); Gloria Obianyo (Flo Jackson); Joseph Potter (Lee Harvey Oswald); Ferdy Roberts (Carlos Marcello).
Tickets:
Visit the Marylebone Theatre website.
Main image: Gloria Obianyo, Janie Dee, credit Helen Maybanks.
