Attended the Saturday night performance of "End of the Rainbow," Peter Quilter's look at the fateful final months of the legendary Judy Garland's life. I'd heard from multiple sources that the book was weak, but that Tracie Bennett gave a performance so powerful it'd have shaken Dorothy straight back to Kansas, so went into it looking at it through that prism. That the Belasco Theater was sparsely populated -- on the OPENING Saturday night -- only fed into my low expectations. (My pals Christopher and Matt and I had the entire back row of our section to ourselves ... well, until a 113-year-old man and his wife arrived well into the first act with the loudest plastic bag ever and proceeded to sit on Matt's lap and rattle it nonstop for 10 minutes.
My friends and I got through the first act and then politely compared notes -- surprisingly, everyone seemed to be no the same page: Tracie Bennett was indeed fantastic ("not so much an impersonation as an embodiment"), but the script seemed weak as were her leading men -- Tom Pelphrey as Mickey Deans (played with no complexity whatsoever) and Michael Cumpsty as Anthony, her pianist, whose Scottish accent was as spotty as one of Judy's Talk of the Town performances.
By the time the second act got going, I was able to throw my expectations aside and just enjoy the show, for better or worse. Bennett continued to dazzle, as the show continued to underwhelm, with her incredibly launch into a song slumped on the sofa in an alcohol/barbiturate hangover and an incredibly awkward "announcement" of Garland's death. (And which community theater organization built that "set"?)
I tweeted during intermission that I do not expect this show to be around in a month, and we all exited 50 minutes later still convinced Bennett was a treasure, but "End of the Rainbow" was seriously flawed, the "Iron Lady" of this year's Tony awards. Translation: Probably best suited for hardcore practitioners of Judyism only, who (as Robert LeLeux points out) are a dying breed.
But then I got home and read Ben Brantley's review in the New York Times (HERE) and began to wonder if I had seen the same show ... or if the whole night had been a dream.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Is This the 'End of the Rainbow'? Depends Who You Ask.
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3 comments:
at least we were the youngest and prettiest in the audience....
Surprised that the theater was nearly empty on Saturday, since it was full on Wednesday. (Maybe the Easter/Passover weekend?) The Wednesday audience was very enthusiastic, which may have had us thinking more highly of the play.
I thought Tracie Bennett was wonderful. She didn't sound all that much like Judy Garland, but she's a good singer, and she certainly had the intensity. I wasn't so impressed with the male leads; I thought they were both adequate, but not standout. Then again, the roles may not have offered the opportunity for "standout." My criticism would be a little along the lines of my criticism for "CQ/CX" -- a little bit "movie of the week," depicting what happened, but not giving you too much beyond that. It did leave me wanting to find a biography of Garland and see how accurate it was. (Mickey Deans wrote an as-told-to autobiography that I read excerpts from way back when. His tale was more along the lines that Garland had cut way back on drinking and drugs while she was with him and was happy for the first time in her life. Liza Minnelli's comment on his version was that her mother was a great actress. And if Deans thought he had turned her life around it was because she wanted him to believe that, not that it was the case. I also seem to remember reading something years later, around the time of Deans' death, that led me to think he was gay. But that definitely wasn't the suggestion in the play. Clearly, I have some research to do.)
I saw the show a week ago today, and the audience was pretty good. They went nuts over Tracie Bennett, as I did.
I realize that I could lose my gay card for saying so, but I went in knowing little about Judy garland other than the headlines. So I didn't need to wonder if Bennett was a "good" Judy garland. All I saw was someone who was putting on an amazing performance and had an incredible set of pipes. I loved the show.
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