Speculations ★★ Marylebone Theatre | Oct 30, 2026 - Jan 17, 2027


Dorothy Kilgallen is probably not a familiar name to British audiences. She was a prominent American journalist, crime reporter, Broadway columnist and television personality who became a celebrity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Speculations examines her investigations into the death of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The story is largely a recounting of Kilgallen's conspiracy theories surrounding these two events. Playwright Torben Betts creates the character of Flo, Kilgallen's new nanny, as a pretext for the journalist to narrate her theories. He then inserts scenes between Carlos Marcello, the mob boss, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of Kennedy, and between Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe to illustrate these ideas. Lee Newby's set is clever and versatile, switching between the three locations, but the production is less convincing when it comes to period detail. The mob boss, for example, has long hair styled in a way that looks more 2026 than 1963. The actors also struggle with their American accents, particularly Robert F. Kennedy's upper-class Bostonian inflection. Janie Dee is the most successful, giving a performance that makes Kilgallen the closest thing the play has to a complex character. The rest of the characters are fairly one-dimensional stereotypes, used to illustrate the thesis that politics and society in general are controlled by a self-serving, secretive elite. The usual question one asks when a work deals with historical figures is whether we would care about the story if it were not about famous people. In this case, the only reason to care about the story is that the people involved are famous. One wonders, however, whether a younger audience will really be interested in this old conspiracy theory. There is an attempt to make it relevant by drawing parallels with the current climate of distrust of those in positions of power whose behaviour seems to escape scrutiny, but it is questionable whether the comparison adds much to the play.

Rated: ★★

Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Helen Maybanks

When, Where, Getting there:
Map & Location: 35 Park Rd, London NW1 6XT, UK

Most Popular

Stories – The Tap Dance Sensation ★★★★★ Sadler's Wells Peacock Theatre | Oct 23 - Nov 2, 2024

Image
Tap dancing is a form usually associated with those wonderful old Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and '40s, but the RB company brings this dance art into the 21st Century with an extraordinary production that also incorporates jazz dance and rap. Stories is a very meta narrative that recounts the experience of Icarus, a young actor who is playing a newspaper worker in a film. While the myth of Icarus is usually seen as a commentary on the hubris of a youth who misuses the invention of his father, in this version things are flipped so that the enthusiastic younger man is trapped in a power relationship with the Daedalus-like figure of his director. That dynamic is also mirrored in the story of the film which is being made – a naïve young worker is first abused by his boss and then lured into a struggle with a gambling gang lord. Stories explores these overlapping tales of manipulation and creativity in a manner that is wonderfully original and totally enthralling. The dance sequ...
Full Details »

CADEL: Lungs on Legs ★★★★ Riverside Studios | Oct 13 - Nov 15, 2026

Image
This is the true story of an Australian cyclist who dreamt of winning the Tour de France. In a sport plagued by drugs and cheating, he strove to run an honest race and to triumph for his country. Connor Delves, who wrote and stars in this biography, creates a portrait of grit and determination that will resonate with fans of the sports underdog genre. Think Rocky Balboa on a bicycle. It is an inspiring tale of perseverance and resilience, and Delves puts in a fine performance, most of which is on various bicycles. While we are given some of Cadel Evans’ difficult background, as his parents moved from place to place and later divorced, there is little attempt to draw an in-depth psychological portrait of the athlete. His relationship with Aldo Sassi, his coach who died before Evans achieved his goal, is also only sketched in. Nor is there much exploration of the complexities of competing at this level, the commodification of athletes or their relationships with sponsors. CADEL: Lungs on...
Full Details »

Franz & Marie ★★ Charing Cross Theatre | Sep 28 - Nov 14, 2026

Image
Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck , written in 1836-37 and published posthumously in 1879, is acknowledged to be a series of fragments rather than a fully developed work. The challenge for any adaptor is to transform this political parable into a coherent and moving drama with psychologically complex characters. Woyzeck is the embodiment of the proletariat, exploited by those above him and subjected to a cruel scientific experiment. Given today’s political climate, with the power of oligarchs no longer concealed and the increasingly unsettling presence of AI, there would seem to be plenty here for an adaptor to explore. Unfortunately, this production fails to rise to the occasion. The characters remain largely one-dimensional and the story veers towards melodrama rather than tragedy. The decision to introduce Gaelic music and to create an almost céilí-like atmosphere is particularly unsuccessful. Some of the ballads are suitably plaintive, but their melancholy never deepens our understanding of ...
Full Details »

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins ★★★ The Other Palace | Oct 22, 2026 - Jan 3, 2027

Image
Garry Starr is the comic alter ego of Australian actor, writer and performer Damien Warren-Smith. Before Garry Starr: Classic Penguins , there was Garry Starr Performs Everything , a comic look at different theatrical genres, and Garry Starr: Greece Lightning , a humorous take on mythology. The latest one-hour addition to the Starr oeuvre takes as its starting point Penguin Books paperbacks, which aimed to make literature affordable and accessible to everyone. However, the show draws only on the book titles themselves, from Moby Dick to Great Expectations , as the basis for its clowning and physical comedy, much of which revolves around Starr remaining naked throughout. The literary parody is relatively thin, with the silliness and shock value taking precedence. Audience participation is extensive, with members of the audience brought up on stage and a nude Starr body-surfing through the crowd. Ultimately, humour is highly subjective, and this broad approach may not appeal to everyone...
Full Details »

Table 17 ★★★ Kiln Theatre | Sep 17 - Oct 24, 2026

Image
Table 17 is a charming little romcom about Jada and Dallas, who meet again after a failed engagement. What will Jada wear for the occasion? Is it a date or not a date? Will they get back together, or have they moved on? The humour is touching and will ring true with anyone who has ever experienced a failed relationship, although the story itself has a somewhat predictable feel. Martha Wallace as Jada and Jamel Westman as Dallas create thoroughly convincing and completely likeable characters. His faux cool and her needy strength generate plenty of laughter, but it is Michael Rishaw who almost steals the show in his turns as the camp, wisecracking maître d’, River, and Jada’s sport-obsessed co-worker and suitor, Eric. His transformations produce amazingly accurate and instantly recognisable types. He also serves as the narrator of this slight story, delivering its moral: “Maybe the lesson isn’t in the outcome, but in the effort. We all deserve such effort.” It is an understated plea for...
Full Details »

A Small and Quiet Light ★★★ Orange Tree Theatre | Sep 21 - Oct 24, 2026

Image
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan had an extraordinary life. Descended from the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, born in Moscow and raised in Paris, she fled to Britain with her family in 1940 after the fall of France. She joined the WAAF before being recruited by the Special Operations Executive and, in June 1943, was sent to occupied France by Lysander aircraft as a wireless operator. The life expectancy for wireless operators working in occupied France was said to be just six weeks, yet Khan continued operating in Paris for several months after the rest of her network had been rounded up. This is a life full of drama, but the challenge for any biographical play is to shape that material into a story with a clear point and a strong arc of development. The facts may all be fascinating, but the playwright must decide which to include, which to leave out and how much dramatic licence to take with the characters in order to make the story work. Unfortunately, A Small and Quiet Light sticks too clos...
Full Details »

Triumph ★★★ Almeida Theatre | October 16 - 23, 2026

Image
Written in the early second century AD, Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars chronicles the lives of Julius Caesar, who never held the title of emperor, and the first eleven emperors of Rome. Their personalities, private lives, ambitions and scandals are all on display, and although scholars may debate the accuracy of some of the accounts, they certainly make for interesting reading. In her 15-minute play Triumph , Caryl Churchill draws on many of Suetonius’ more outrageous stories about the emperors’ conduct, putting them in the mouth of a blonde press secretary who delivers her pronouncements in the now familiar style of the White House. The audience is left to draw the parallels with the behaviour of the current occupant of that landmark and his imperial pretensions. It is a clever and amusing device, but the play amounts to little more than a short skit of the kind more commonly associated with the Fringe. The principal attraction is Churchill’s name and the strength of her previous work...
Full Details »

Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists ★★★★★ National Theatre | September 19 - 26, 2026

Image
In Leipzig in 1930, Bertolt Brecht’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was disrupted by Nazi supporters protesting against what they regarded as politically and morally offensive material. Unsurprisingly, Brecht is frequently referenced in Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists and, like Brecht’s work, Tiago Rodrigues’ drama proves to be both intelligent and incendiary. The play’s central premise is that a Portuguese family has created a rite of passage in memory of a woman who was murdered by Fascists. On turning 26, members of the family are expected to kill a selected fascist. The family members all take the name Catarina in memory of the murdered woman, and now it is the turn of one of the great-granddaughters of the family matriarch to carry out the ritual killing. When she hesitates to follow the family tradition, what ensues is a multi-layered exploration of resistance to authoritarianism and the morality of killing in the name of political resistance. The dense ...
Full Details »

Golden Boy ★★★★ Almeida Theatre | Sep 8 - Oct 31, 2026

Image
Written in 1937, Golden Boy is probably Clifford Odets’ most famous work. The story of a young man torn between becoming a violinist or a boxer is a critique of the corrupting influence of the materialism that underpins the American Dream. The theme echoes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , right down to the famous scene in which Gatsby contemplates his beautiful shirts. Young Joe Bonaparte is similarly seduced by a world that values appearances over substance when the gangster Eddie Fuseli showers him with silk shirts and other trappings of success. In forsaking his calling as a musician for the fame and money of boxing, Joe ultimately sacrifices not only his family ties but also his sense of self. The performances are uniformly strong. Josh O’Connor gives Joe an intense, increasingly volatile presence, convincingly charting his transformation from a gifted young musician into a man consumed by ambition and violence. Hayley Squires is equally compelling as the hard-nosed Lorna ...
Full Details »

Girls ★★★★ Young Vic | Oct 22 - Nov 21, 2026

Image
In 2014, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria. The horrific event received considerable press coverage in the West, but Theresa Ikoko’s first professionally produced play brings it to the fore with an intensity and emotional force usually absent from the nightly news as it chronicles the world’s disasters. By introducing us to Tisana, Ruhab and Haleema, she transforms an abstract act of infamy into something personal and profound. From the moment the three appear on stage in a choreographed sequence, Hannah Akhalu, Sewa Zamba and Tara Tijani establish their characters as distinct individuals. Akhalu’s Tisana is shy and tentative, an obedient child who displays extraordinary fortitude in the trials that follow. Zamba’s Ruhab is a mischievous romantic whose aspirations extend little further than finding a boyfriend, while Tijani’s Haleema is a fiercely independent sceptic who punctures both religious and romantic ...
Full Details »

The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings