Theatre Review: Who Killed Marilyn?

19.08.2026

A play that was about love and its absurdity. We had the most desirable woman of her time that was absolutely beloved by the public. But the irony? She could not find love in her relationships. Marilyn was presented as the victim of love. She was presented as one that was oppressed by that which masqueraded as love but which was not love. The idea of love that was being used to mask oppressive power.

The question that kept occuring to me throughout the play was why did these super desirable women appear to choose men that would beat them, desert them, never really love them? When there were so many good men about. It is an extraordinary fact that such women will often choose the man that is completely wrong.

Part confessional, part therapy session, and mostly in monologue form interspersed with narrative action, Pixie Lot’s performance as Marilyn was engaging, even mesmerising. The focus was on Marilyn’s relationships with men, mostly her romantic relationships. The idea seemed to be to expose the conspiracy of love. How it favours the men that were in power. How its victims are seduced.

I myself have written about the conspiracy of love. And how it affects Asian men such as myself. In a play like ‘Who Killed Marilyn’, the thought is acceptable. Because of feminism. Is the thought acceptable when it comes from the pen of an Asian man? I would suggest not. Yet we see these conspiracies of love. We feel them and orientate our life around them. As in ‘Who Killed Marilyn?’, it is a power play.

How did Marilyn come across in this play? She is presented as a woman of talent who is not taken seriously by others because of her beauty. She is keenly sensitive to slight, to disrespect. She has horrors of being taken into mental institutions like her mother and her grandmother. She is presented as a voracious reader. As an intellect. And? Also as a writer that keeps a diary with secrets that could shake and take down the world and its system of power. The play is about Marilyn the writer and her power. The divine feminine energy of the writer that writes the truth. And the play is about truth. What is being said, whatever happened, this is a counter narrative that aims to expose power and mechanisms. Not the individualising narrative that lays the blame for the death of the writer and the actress on Marilyn herself, conveniently hushing up the context in which eradication takes place and death is formed.