All high kicks and hip swings, Jack Cole’s dances from the 1950s are still sexy. But their vitality is lost in this play about the genius of the forgotten choreographer, the father of jazz within musical theatre who helped turn Marilyn Monroe into a star.
Liam Burke’s play is about authority over women’s bodies, yet the story is told from the perspective of a man claiming a woman’s glory. Referred to throughout by her birth name, Norma Jeane, or – patronisingly – as “babydoll”, Monroe is a peripheral figure, put down and shoved aside for Cole to remind us repeatedly that she would be nothing without him.
From his sleek grey apartment in Hollywood, a hungover Cole (Tim English) holds a pool-party wake after hearing of Monroe’s death. If his lack of empathy is meant to be a comment on the industry’s shallowness, it’s half-hearted and flat. Under Robert McWhir’s direction, the evening quickly turns into a glum self-pity fest for Cole’s own fading spotlight, mourning the public’s changing devotion from stage to screen.
His monologue is interrupted by visits from former muses, with Rachel Stanley kept busy multi-rolling them all. These women are brightly painted in clothes rather than character; each silly, frilly, posturing visitor is quickly shooed behind a curtain, simply a catalyst for Cole’s next anecdote.
The play is best when issues of ownership creep in, of both bodies and dance moves. A fight with Cole’s former assistant, the dancer Gwen Verdon, about who owns steps he devised with her body, leads to a brilliant dance-off. It is the first time the stage properly feels alive and fun. All the more frustrating for the glimpse of what this evening could have been.
At Above the Stag theatre, London, until 7 April.
