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A CurtainUp Los Angeles
Review
End of the Rainbow
By Jon
Magaril
| "If only you saw what I
see. . .Esther in Meet Me in St Louis. . .Vicky Lester in A Star
Is Born. . . Dorothy. . ." —Anthony to Judy Garland "They don't want me. They want her." — Judy Garland to Anthony |
Michael Cumpsty and Tracie
Bennett (photo by Craig Schwartz)
|
Mickey Deans (Erik Heger), her new fiance/ manager, has been trying to get her clean and sober. But she fears a straight Judy won't be up to snuff. “They don't want me. They want her.” It's a cliched line, as many are here, but it gets the point across. Garland can't be the exalted legend without getting high. So she's run off stage early in her set at London's Talk of the Town and won't return unless Deans gives her what she craves.
Garland may be at the mercy of audiences and bill collectors who demand satisfaction but she also knows how to get what she wants. In this case, it's Ritalin. Hopped up at last, Bennett's Garland drives the band faster and faster, until they're thrillingly close to careening out of control. Even the stage lights around her start to flash dazzlingly as if plugging into her electric grid. And we feel it too. We're in the presence of a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon.
The production's strategy pays off here. Bennett's Garland is always on because she's possessed with a demonic talent that must be exercised to be exorcized, at least for a while. And when the Harold Arlen/ Johnny Mercer standard is through, Bennett finally relaxes.
In this lovely calm after the storm, she and Michael Cumpsty as Anthony her gay pianist talk simply to each other. He offers her stability, love, marriage on an isle far away from it all. She tosses the remaining pills out the window. We buy into the fantasy that Garland might take him up on his offer because we still want her to land somewhere over the rainbow. And we're relieved to witness a few moments of honest emotion.
The scene honors Garland's gay supporters and gives her clear-eyed agency in her final life-choices. There's a decency even in the latter. This offers a stark contrast to the rest of the play which, within its first minute, has Garland on her knees excited to service her well-built fiance.
Terry Johnson's production as well has been coarse and exaggerated like British music hall. But it has its pleasures. Most of the obvious laughs land. And the song standards are orchestrated brilliantly by Chris Egan and played wonderfully under Jeffrey Saver's music direction.
The structure, like so much of the writing, lacks variety and invention. We bounce back and forth over and over from the same hotel drawing room, with blocking that mostly stays around the couch, and the concert stage. By the middle of the second act it gets to be a drag.
As conceived, Garland might as well be played in drag. Everything has been developed from the outside in. A good practitioner like Tommy Femia would simultaneously use Quilter's hoary writing as another trap boxing Garland in and find moments all along to clue us in to a mind and heart still capable of sensitivity. Bennett doesn't take that approach but she puts everything over with unstinting energy and accomplishment.
Cumpsty keeps his head above the fray by underplaying. Heger gamely fits the bill as a lunk of a hunk who's in way over his head.
Ninety minutes of the play tarnishes a legend. Bad behavior, megalomania, base desires, they're all fair game. But they're old news offered with precious little insight. At the end of The End of the Rainbow though, there's a pot of theatrical gold.
Editor's Note: Like it or not, this show has found its followers both in London and New York.
| End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter Directed by Terry Johnson Cast: Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland with Michael Cumpsty (Anthony), Erik Heger (Mickey Deans), Miles Anderson (BBC Interviewer/Porter, ASM). Scenic & Costume Design: William Dudley Lighting: Christopher Akerlind Sound: Gareth Owen Musical Arrangements: Gareth Valentine Orchestrations: Chris Egan Musical Direction: Jeffrey Saver Music Coordinator: Seymour Red Press ProductionStage Manager: Mark Dubrow Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes including 1 intermission Runs: Tuesday through Sundays until April 21, 2013 Ahmanson Theatre 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Reservations: (213) 628-2772 Reviewed by: Jon Magaril |
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