Marilyn

Sue Glover's new play is about two hugely successful blonde movie stars, but the first question on everyone's lips is likely to be: how is Marilyn? Does the actress convince as the icon whose face is perhaps the most recognisable in the world?

You might have already made an assessment based on the picture to the right, but wait until you've seen the show, in which Frances Thorburn gives a thousand-watt performance. Her Marilyn is at once bold and fragile, shrew and naïve, child-like and x-rated, and it's impossible to take your eyes off her.

How can any other actress compete? This, to some extent, is the point made by the play, which sees the then Mrs Arthur Miller form an unlikely friendship with Simone Signoret, five years her senior and – more importantly – an Oscar-winning, serious actress. Dominique Hollier plays her with all the restraint and sophistication Marilyn lacks.

Glover was inspired by reading about the unlikely friendship between the pair, who appeared to have little but a profession and hair colour in common. She teases out other similarities as their hairdresser (played by Pauline Knowles) touches up their roots, and finds a common blindspot: men.

Simone's description of herself as husband Yves Montand's “number one groupie” seems at odds with her intelligence, just as Marilyn's staunch support of witch-hunted Miller and others in her inner circle was at odds with the “dumb blonde” reputation she courted but loathed.

Who knows where the truth lies, or what Marilyn was like behind closed doors. The play doesn't attempt to rewrite history, or suggest that the star's public persona was entirely artificial - here it seems more like one facet of an unwell woman fighting a losing internal battle - but it certainly raises interesting questions about perception and reality in an age of Twitter feeds and paparazzi in which “glamour” has a tawdry new meaning.