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Dir: Colin McFarlane, Warren Wills (musical director).
Cast: Nicola Hughes, Wendy Morgan
Description: Musical drama set in the mid-1950s, charting the true story of the friendship between Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. Ella cannot get into a whites-only club for a residency; Marilyn hears of her predicament, and strives to reverse the decision. Written by Bonnie Greer.
Trains: Tube: Stratford 
, Tube / Bus: 86, 104, 108, 158, 238, 241, 257, 262, 473 
Phone: 0208534 0310
Website: www.stratfordeast.com
Email: theatreroyal@stratfordeast.com
Extra info: Food, Air Conditioning, Pub
Sharing and caring: Wendy Morgan as Marilyn Monroe, and Nicola Hughes as Ella Fitzgerald
They don't make celebrities like they did back in 1955, when screen icon Marilyn Monroe personally intervened to ensure that Ella Fitzgerald became the first black person to play the famous Mocambo Club in Hollywood.
Even today, when a black candidate leads the race for the US presidency and racism is largely in retreat, the little-known friendship of the black jazz diva and white Hollywood sex goddess makes for an absorbing piece of theatre.
Chicago-born playwright Bonnie Greer, daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, understands what it took Ella to rise from a ghetto orphanage to stardom, and what it must have taken Marilyn to compel a segregated LA nightclub to hire Ella.
British jazz lovers, raised on magazine exposés about their heroes, also know about US racism. About Billie Holiday, entering theatres via the back door while the Artie Shaw band walked in the front. About Dizzy Gillespie, ordered out of the swimming pool of Dallas's biggest hotel because of "a private party in progress". And about Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk designing music white men couldn't steal.
We sense the bitterness beneath the bright soliloquies and tuneful songs of the first act, when Wendy Morgan, a convincingly neurotic Marilyn, twisting glamorously on her chaiselongue, and Nicola Hughes, a subtly damaged Ella, happy only when the music starts, complain about their careers.
Separated by clever lighting and a transparent screen between front and back sets, their stories barely hang together at this point but after the interval the real dialogue begins and theatrical lightning starts to flash.
Very nervous when they meet ("Can I pour you some water?" asks Ella. "No, no," cries Marilyn, "your people have endured so much slavery already!") they come to realise how much they share - adulation and fan-worship, but also bad things like loneliness and an odd ability to show the public things they can't have.
Nicola's singing voice is stagier than Ella's ever was, and a drummer would add snap to Warren Wills's trio, especially in the nightclub scene, but these are minor carps about a touching and thought-provoking evening.
Until 15 March. Information: 020 8534 0310.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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An electrifying performance from both Morgan and Hughes. Both are accomplished actresses and Hughes, although lacking the snappy, natural soulfulness of Ella's voice, achieves some very tuneful (if rather trained, musical theatre) renditions of a small selection of Ella's vast repertoire.
These two performers are thoroughly believable from the moment they get on stage and the audience is shown some insight into the inhumanity of the segregation era AND the ever utilitarian entertainment industry.
I haven't been THAT entertained in years. Stratford hasn't been THIS lucky in ages!
- Jonathan Paul Hellyer, London, UK
