Best-known as scheming Cindy on TV’s EastEnders, Michelle Collins is currently starring in a one-woman show, Motorhome Marilyn, at the Gilded Balloon Doonstairs as part of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Performances will continue until August 25, although most dates are already sold out.
“Michelle Collins makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut in Motorhome Marilyn, a dark comedy by Ben Weatherill. The play follows Denise, an aspiring actress with an obsessive relationship with Marilyn Monroe, hoping to live up to the icon’s fame and beauty. In the 1980s, she heads to Hollywood, but as her dreams falter, she is forced to confront the painful truth of unfulfilled aspirations. Inspired by Michelle’s real-life encounter with a woman known as Motorhome Marilyn, the play reveals the toll of living in the shadow of an icon, exploring failure, aging, and the heartbreaking cost of unattained dreams.”
Michelle spoke about the inspiration behind the play in an interview for the Sunday Post.
“‘I used to spend bouts of time in LA looking for work, and on this particular day I was in North Hollywood near to the Walk of Fame when I saw this little motorhome pull up,’ Michelle explained. ‘A woman came out – she was probably in her 60s – and she was wearing the iconic Marilyn Monroe white dress and blonde wig. I watched her go over to the parking meter, where she fed coins into the machine with these long red talon nails, and a guy yelled to her, “Hey Marilyn”. She acknowledged him and walked off.
‘I asked the guy who she was, and he explained that she drove around the Sunset Strip all day. I never saw her again but it intrigued me. We’re used to seeing older Elvis impersonators but not older Marilyns. I wondered what the woman’s story was and how she had ended up in LA doing this.’
Now, Michelle has developed the mystery Marilyn into a fully-rounded character … ‘She’s like a lot of people who went out there in the ’80s seeking their fortune, but she’s also running away from something,’ explained 63-year-old Michelle. ‘She has a difficult relationship with her family and can’t go back home. But what happens if you don’t quite make it?
She becomes totally immersed in the Marilyn character and she feels their lives are similar, but ‘Marilyn died at 36 and Denise is my age. She struggles to work out who’s Denise and who’s Marilyn. It touches on themes of tragedy and isolation – I think a lot of people have started to live more insular lives, especially since Covid.’
It was the pandemic that put the brakes on Motorhome Marilyn five years ago. The venue had been hired, the photoshoot done, the posters made, and then the world came to a standstill. Michelle’s friend, and the original writer of the play, Stewart Permutt, became very sick during Covid.
‘He was bipolar and he had two massive episodes which resulted in him being sectioned,’ she explained. ‘It was awful for him and also for his friends to see. Motorhome Marilyn was the last thing he wrote.
‘After Covid, we tried to do a day of workshopping at a theatre in London but it was clear he wasn’t ready. He was happy for us to get a new writer on board, and then The Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh asked if we fancied putting it on, and I thought, “Why not?”
‘We got a fantastic new writer, Ben Weatherill, who has rewritten the script with elements of the original but a different take on it. Stuart died last year, so I see this show as both a gift to him and a gift from him. He left me his entire literary works – a room in my house is full of them. I’m not kidding, the first script I found was Motorhome Marilyn …‘”
While it’s an intriguing concept, reviews have been mixed…
“In front of an adoring audience, Collins plays Denise with a mixture of the hard-bitten and the gullible. Under the direction of Alexandra Spencer-Jones, she also does a suitably breathy and sweet-voiced rendition of ‘River of No Return’, suggesting that with the right breaks, this copycat performer could have done all right for herself … For no obvious reason, Denise has chosen to tell her life story to her pet snake. And what a dismal tale it is … It would be one thing if these were the backstage anecdotes of a real actor, quite another for them to be fictional. Why spend time with such a lost and deluded person?”
– Mark Fisher, The Guardian
“Motorhome Marilyn is a solo play and Michelle Collins herself is great. She has that otherworldly striking beauty and star power that command your attention. I couldn’t look away from her. However, the material here is not good enough for her. The play trudges along in a bleak, mournful lumber with little other than Collins herself to thrill or entertain. For a black comedy, the comedy element is lacking.”
“There’s considerably more bite to Ben Weatherill’s Motorhome Marilyn than its blurb suggests … Collins makes an ideal choice for the part, her trailer park Marilyn devotee, vulnerable in the same way as a Scorpion. These are boots in the world that could crush her, but watch out for the sting … It’s a strong plot, if not all that surprising, and offers plenty for Michelle Collins to sink her chops into. Denise is a memorable creation: likeable, scary, vulnerable and possessed of a dog-eared charisma.”
– WJ Quinn, The QR
“Denise has similarities to A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche DuBois … The set is haunting too and adds to the show’s dark undertone. It is a solemn, slightly dingy set, full of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, including old movie posters and even Monroe themed bedding, really emphasising the Marilyn obsession. Yes it’s creepy and slightly deranged but my advice is just embrace the madness—it’s worth it!”
– Cory Gouley, The Indiependent
“It occurs to us that, as an ageing actor, it must be getting harder to go on pretending to be someone who died young. Arguably the script might have been stronger if it explored this a little further. As it is, having opened as a cosy character-based piece, the show later veers into shock horror. Although it’s billed as a dark comedy, the contrast doesn’t sit too comfortably within the framework of an hour-long show.”
– Adrian Ross, The Reviews Hub
“Collins is a likable performer, but as we are now out of previews at the Fringe, there isn’t the same forgiveness for fluffed lines. As an impersonator, she’s good and as a singer, she’s great so it’s a shame that more of that isn’t utilised in the play. Denise draws parallels between Marilyn’s life and her own and there is some potential there, but the points get lost in a rambling script.”
– Natalie O’Donoghue, Broadway World
“When you are picking plays from a choice of nearly 4000 shows, you need a hook to catch attention. Motorhome Marilyn had two … the producer’s intention that this is a play with a future is clear from the detailed set created in the Gilded Balloon Doonstairs venue, littered with Monroe memorabilia … As a one-woman show, it puts a lot on the shoulders of the actress. Collins never quite nails the breathless sexiness of Monroe …”
– Nick Wayne, West End Best Friend
“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 … 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 … While this is the end of the road for Denise, there’s plenty of mileage left in Motorhome Marilyn beyond the Fringe!”
– Steve Coats-Dennis, The Recs
Perhaps the most interesting take on Motorhome Marilyn – from a Monroe fan’s perspective, anyway – came from Lorraine Nicol, as posted on the Marilyn Remembered Facebook group.
“The performance I went to was sold out, but it was safe to say that there were just as many people there for Michelle Collins, as there was for Marilyn … Despite the play being called Motorhome Marilyn, I didn’t really feel like Marilyn was essential to the storyline. In truth, it could have been anybody that the character of Denise was obsessed with and the storyline would still work … there was nothing tying the two of them together. Between costume changes, there was audio clips of Marilyn speaking (in interviews and movie scenes) but I didn’t understand the correlation between the two and it made little sense.
However, what I DID enjoy was the set, as it was adorned by Monroe memorabilia everywhere… books, DVD’s VHS’. Bags etc.. it was like a game of eye spy thinking ‘I have that!… oh I don’t have that!.. that’s cool!’
And the stand out moment for me was when Denise makes a speech about how relevant Marilyn Monroe is to today’s society and pop culture and how she paved the way for so many after her. I felt a little emotional and felt if only there were more scenes like that, I may have enjoyed it more … Whilst I may not have liked it, there were certainly many others in the audience who did … some were laughing, cheering and there was even a standing ovation at the end!”
And finally, if you can’t make it to Scotland, Ben Weatherill’s original script for Motorhome Marilyn is now available for purchase in paperback and digital formats.
The Marilyn Report 
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