Dark Voyager

The premise is fascinating. It’s Hollywood 1962 and with the previews just starting for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? the verdict is not yet known. Gossip queen Hedda Hopper that night invites over the stars, the aging screen rivals Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and later pill-popping ingénue Marilyn Monroe joins the party.

John Misto’s latest play crackles with boozy and obscene abuse which amuses, but is cluttered with so many fantastical and possibly true revelations they all fall over each other.

Crawford had an affair with Monroe and yet tries to smother her on the sofa; the waiter houseboy turns out to be Crawford’s abandoned son; Hopper gets her blackmailing secrets from famed spymaster and closet queen J Edger Hoover; Clark Gable was likely murdered and President Kennedy is bedding everyone. You get the idea.

Director Anna Crawford has assembled a fine cast, who mostly nail well the accents and star impersonations, but by the end they flounder in the rush of words when the truth, timing and rhythms of this production slip off the planet.  Jeanette Cronin and Kate Raison are fabulous as bitchy Bette and coolly deceitful Joan, but sadly Misto rarely swaps their colourful abuse for more interesting speculation about their natures. Once, Bette says the world itself demands they be rivals; it’s like ying and yang. 

Lizzie Mitchell too is a joy as the confused if sometimes perceptive Marilyn, all bust, blonde and creamy skin. Belinda Giblin and Eric Beecroft are less convincing as Hedda and her waiter (and, of course, gay aspiring actor). Both could have been more realistic foils to the star acts around them. Someone somehow had to bring truth into that room.

The staging too is awkward on Anna Gardiner’s opulent but oddly non-sixties living room. Her costuming has flair and good character, except for Davis, giving the otherwise resourceful Cronin nothing to work with.

True, the laughs were frequent but even they faded as the lengthy second act unfurled, eroded by hyperbole and repetition.