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End of the Rainbow
Review by Neal Weaver
International City Theatre
Through March 15
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Some years before Judy Garland’s death, she appeared at a star-studded benefit for the Actors Studio in New York, alongside Carole Channing, Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters and Josephine Premice — and Judy’s children, including Liza Minelli. Judy wore a black satin evening suit, which emphasized her matchstick legs, the result of years of abuse of drugs and alcohol. She was sharp-featured, with a potbelly and a double chin, and she was visibly insecure and defensive. Nevertheless, the high point of the evening was when she perched on a high wooden stool to sing to the assembled stars, who sat on the floor at her feet — even the ladies, like Jan Sterling, in pristine white bouffant gowns. The voice, and the magic, were still there. The audience felt privileged as she performed her familiar repertoire, concluding, of course, with “Over the Rainbow.” But some in the audience wondered, given her ravaged appearance, if she would ever perform in public again. Then she took herself in hand, and managed one more stunning comeback concert, performing to legions of infatuated fans.
Peter Quilter’s Olivier Award-winning play doesn’t attempt to tell the whole Garland story, though previous events are mentioned in passing: her vaudeville background, her stormy relations with her mother, and the way in which the powers at MGM plied her with drugs when she was still a teenager to keep her going through all those exhausting back-to-back MGM musicals. Instead Quilter concentrates on the few weeks, starting at Christmas, 1968, when Garland (in a dynamite performance by multi-talented Gigi Bermingham) was in London to prepare for a six-week engagement at a club called The Talk of the Town.
End of the Rainbow gets underway with Judy’s arrival at her suite in London’s Ritz Hotel, accompanied by her fiancé, Mickey Deans (Michael Rubenstone), who would become her fifth and last husband, and her adoring gay accompanist Anthony Chapman (Brent Schindele, who also serves as music director for the production’s instrumental combo). Chapman and Deans are trying determinedly to keep Judy off her liquor and drugs, including her Ritalin. But she is all over the place, imperious, submissive, willful, demanding, defensive, pugnacious, and occasionally playing for pathos. Things start off reasonably well, but as the grueling six weeks of performances take their toll, she spins out of control, eluding her caregivers, drinking, and finding a London doctor who’ll provide her with drugs. Deans, who knows how broke they are, grows desperate, and when she goes off the rails and walks off in the middle of a performance, he is willing to give her anything she wants just to get her to finish the engagement.
Aaron Jackson’s clever set moves seamlessly from the hotel suite to the stage at The Talk of the Town, so that we see Judy in rehearsal and performance, and providing Bermingham with the opportunity to sing nine songs from the Garland repertoire, including “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Just in Time,” “The Trolley Song,” “The Man that Got Away,” “Come Rain or Shine,” and, inevitably, “Over the Rainbow.” Bermingham doesn’t really look like Garland — and nobody ever quite sounds like Garland — but she is a fine singer and actress. And she’s not merely doing an impersonation. She’s playing a demanding, complex and contradictory role, and there are times when she evokes Garland with eerie verisimilitude, particularly in a harrowing scene when she grows disoriented in performance, becomes entangled in her microphone cord, and finally, in desperation, flees the stage.
Quilter’s fictionalized portrait of Garland is persuasive and credible, and his play is always interesting, but as Garland becomes more and more demoralized, it begins to feel like watching a train wreck. Director John Henry Davis delivers a finely honed production, and the top-notch cast makes it always worthwhile. Schindele is a standout as the romantic accompanist, who offers to take Garland off to a cottage in Brighton, away from the stresses and strains of show business, but fails to realize that the audience’s love and the adrenaline of performance have become drugs she can’t live without. Rubenstone’s Mickey walks a fine line between a genuinely caring man and a ruthless exploiter, so we’re never entirely sure which he is — perhaps both. And Wallace Angus Bruce provides solid support in three smaller roles.
International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through March 15. (562) 436-4610, InternationalCityTheatre.org.
