Review: NORMA JEANE: THE MUSICAL, Lost Theatre, June 2 2016

Such is the quality of London theatre that one can forget just how difficult it is to pull off a successful musical, which is why Norma Jeane: The Musical (continuing at Lost Theatre until 19 June) is welcome in some ways. Because this production makes musical theatre look very difficult indeed.

The premise is not a bad one. It's 1961 and Marilyn Monroe's mental health has deteriorated so far that she's incarcerated in a grim cell of a secure hospital under a false name. There her mind wanders and the voices that have always haunted her become hallucinations and, through them and their songs, we learn of how Marilyn's extraordinary life has played out.

If that sounds a bit like Dennis Potter's celebrated "The Singing Detective", well, that's how it could have been, I suppose. Unfortunately the songs, credited to a number of writers, lack the bounce that the dismal set and painful circumstances need in order to lift our spirits (for example, The Curse Of Beauty is placed 17th in a list of 19 numbers so its downbeat message is hardly rebutted before the curtain). The singing is variable - which is often the case on the fringe - but when, midway through the second half, the excellent Ruth Betteridge (as young Norma Jeane) belts out her only solo number, it does remind us of what we've been missing.

Strictly Come Dancing's Joanne Clifton is the star casting and she shows that she can act and, if the music's volume is wound down a bit, sing too, albeit in a voice that needs some amplification - body mics are a curious absence in a production not otherwise short of funding. She has some stage presence too, although it would be good to see her given more opportunity to display the comic timing that Marilyn so brilliantly exploited herself, instead of mainly pouting and preening.

That she gets only a couple of laughs is the result of TL Shannon's script that starts with a good idea - the conflict between Norma Jeane, the fragile girl with the chaotic upbringing, and Marilyn, the world's most famous movie star. Unfortunately, it doesn't really progress from there with (in my experience) an unprecedented commitment to repeating every point in the plot - at one time I genuinely thought I was in a prolonged episode of deja-vu. The show is billed at two hours and twenty minutes, but there's barely enough material for half that. Pace, so critical to success in any production, is sacrificed to relentless exposition.

Despite all the effort that has plainly gone into the show, it fails to make the most of an interesting take on a twentieth century icon.