Dark Voyager

John Misto’s new full-length play puts Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe and vicious gossip columnist Hedda Hopper on stage together. This is a two-act drama we’re talking about, not a crazy farce or a revue sketch.

There are loads of laughs and a mention of every factoid, rumour and saucy speculation you’ve ever heard about the power quartet. But can such ingredients make a drama that ends in bitter confrontation and an infamous, real-life murder/suicide? That is the question.

Many of the opening night audience — perhaps even the majority — laugh almost continuously and, at the end, cheer the cast mightily. I am with them about the Ensemble’s excellent team of actors, who go all-out to bring such icons to self-obsessed, comic life. But this committed Monroe/Davis/Crawford fan soon grew weary of the constant camp clichés and barbed insults.

It’s August 1962, the month of the first previews of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? and the shockingly early death of La Monroe. At Hopper’s ‘Hollywood Babylon’ mansion (a pretend-opulent setting by Anna Gardiner), Davis (Jeanette Cronin) and Crawford (Kate Raisin) fight over top billing while Hedda’s butler/assistant Skip (Eric Beecroft) hides his true intentions. Hedda (Belina Giblin) reveals that she gets her juiciest gossip direct from FBI boss ‘Gay Edgar Hoover’ (“I hope he chokes on his dildo!”).

Marilyn (Lizzie Mitchell) joins the party just before the interval. Woozy, popping barbiturates and “cool with queers”, she floats through the second act before drifting to a wretchedly unamusing off-stage end.

I have nothing but admiration for these splendid performers who, under the direction of Anna Crawford, bring the legends to recognisable life. It’s a fun night for some. To others it’s a hard-hearted, vastly elongated revue sketch.

Frank Hatherley

Image: Lizzie Mitchell as Marilyn Monroe with Belinda Giblin as Hedda Hopper in Dark Voyager. Photo by Natalie Boog.