Marcy Lafferty's one woman show, Vivien Leigh: the Last
Press Conference, traces the career of Leigh from desperate 18-year-old
wannabe to her legendary role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind and
marriage to Laurence Olivier. There then followed a descent into ill
health with TB, manic depression fuelled by the public's obsession with
Scarlett and a split with Olivier. Lafferty wrote the show herself and
clad in a purple suit, she is convincingly precious as the screen icon,
one minute hoisting up her skirt as she describes various post-Larry
seductions and then bringing real pathos to her descriptions of her two
miscarriages, which she sees as a judgement on Larry and herself for
breaking up their first marriages to be together. Her love of both "Larry
boy" and the stage shine through and it's a performance of some charm and
humour. She details the Hollywood intrigues on the set of Gone With The
Wind, pointedly pretends to forget Greta Garbo's name, mutters "fiddledy
fuck!" and refers to Joan Plowright, Olivier's new lover, as "Joan
Blowright". Her final sadness is convincingly summed up by her five stages
of an actress's life: "Who is Vivien Leigh? Get me Vivien Leigh. Get me a
Vivien Leigh. Get me a young Vivien Leigh. Who is Vivien Leigh?"
For the uninitiated the sheer volume of biographical
detail might be a little intimidating, and the US-born Lafferty is
occasionally more convincing with her American accents than Leigh's plumy
tones, but these are only minor quibbles. For those with an interest in
Hollywood icons, Vivien Leigh is, frankly, my dears, worth giving a damn
about.
