Motorhome Marilyn ★★★★

Albert Einstein once said, “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Motorhome Marilyn, a solo drama written by Ben Weatherill after the original script by the late Stewart Permutt, centres on a British woman who has been running all her life – from a past she could never fully escape towards a future that never arrived. And now, aged 61, in this trailer park, she’s run out of road. A motorhome that remains static is a great metaphor for where the central character is at the start of the play.

Although Michelle Collins is no stranger to stage roles, she has chosen a script for her Edinburgh Fringe debut that is both intriguing and unexpected. She plays Denise Jarvis, an ageing Marilyn Monroe impersonator who fled from England in the 1980s, full of Hollywood dreams. At the point where we meet her, she is living in the titular motorhome, surrounded and enveloped by her collection of Marilyn memorabilia, which both comforts her and smothers her. This solitary life she has chosen for herself – in the motorhome with just herself and her pet snake Bobby for company – both protects her from the outside world but also traps her within.

So much of Motorhome Marilyn is in the balance. Denise ferociously defends Marilyn as an icon – but more than that, she sees the Hollywood icon as her personal saviour when her own mother died. She insists poetically, “It’s a privilege to shed me and slip her on” but when her suitor Vince begins to press his affections, she has to close him out in case it’s Marilyn who is the lure and not Denise. Having impersonated Marilyn for thirty years, the boundaries of her identity have blurred to the point where it’s hard to remember where she ends and the Hollywood legend begins.

What Collins does so beautifully is deliver the dark humour and the emotional drama with equal flair. The Southend girl bemoaning that she might get a yeast infection from the warm air vents that perfectly show off her white halter-neck dress from The Seven Year Itch is laugh-out-loud funny thanks to Michelle’s superb comic timing.

Despite having played the high drama in the UK’s most popular soap for years, the EastEnders actress gets an opportunity really to show her acting chops and to find a range of vulnerabilities along with a survivor’s instinct. Much of what she reveals unveils the relentless misogyny and the multiple exploitations that Denise has endured. And while that may sound bleak, there are parallels in the script akin to Tennessee William’s fragile-yet-fearsome Blanche DuBois, arriving in New Orleans in A Streetcar Named Desire. As an audience, we know this is the final stop for these characters – but the tragedy is they haven’t realised…at least, not yet. And while there’s much tragedy and disappointment to unpack, what keeps the drama intense is these protagonists are not ready to throw in the towel. Having existed around the fraying edges of the Hollywood showbiz dream, having given up so much, the emotional pull for an audience comes from how Denise will fight until her last breath to keep her dream alive.

When Michelle (as Denise performing as Marilyn) breathlessly sings River of No Return, which apart from revealing a plot point of a lover who won’t return, it poignantly signals that her own cache of stardust is about finally to burn out.

Michelle Collins could have chosen a simpler, more predictable vehicle for her undoubted talents. It is to be applauded that she opted instead for a leftfield, and occasionally macabre, slice of Americana with much to say about fame, identity and living an authentic life. She delivers a mesmerising performance of great versatility, drawing us into the twists and turns of this capricious dark comedy. While this is the end of the road for Denise, there’s plenty of mileage left in Motorhome Marilyn beyond the Fringe!