by Laura Kressly

When Denise was a teenager in Southend, she was desperate to become a Hollywood star and willing to do anything to achieve it. Now, decades later, she’s living in a caravan and working as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in Las Vegas, far removed from the life she dreamed of. Soap star Michelle Collins embraces the quirky and troubled Denise but the concept’s execution – an extended monologue to a pet snake – is contrived and dramaturgically flat.

Collins is credited with the idea’s conception, with the script by Ben Weatherill. Denise’s story is shared through sequences of extended narration that are essentially a fictional character’s biography. It calls to mind the sort of thing an actor would do as ‘homework’ to more deeply embody a role, which is not shared with an audience. Even though the monologue is broken into shorter scenes with blackouts in between, it is uniformly paced and all rather dull. This could work as a short story or novella, but there’s a pronounced lack of dramatic action. This begs the question as to why it’s a play at all. Though rules are meant to be broken, this is not a model for disregarding one of the first rules of playwriting to show rather than tell.

There are plenty of resonant themes – broken dreams, escape from a small town, trust, adaptability, perseverance, and so forth – but these are not enough to develop a plot. Indeed, there’s not much of a plot at all until the very end. Even this reveal largely hinges on events in Denise’s past. Whilst it’s evident the production has a big budget and Collins pulls a sizeable audience, this is a prime example of money not buying quality. There are far better, scrappier productions in less glamorous venues that are actually compelling and make sense as pieces of live performance.

Motor Home Marilyn runs through 25 August.