Exasperating, beguiling, vulnerable, terrifying, Tracie Bennett runs the gamut of emotions in a star turn as Judy Garland in End Of The Rainbow.
Peter Quilter’s drama, which has been brewing in different forms for a decade, finally got its West End premiere last night after a previous run at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate theatre. Focusing on the last few months in the life of iconic diva Judy Garland, the play is set during the five-week run of concerts she gave in London in 1968 at The Talk Of The Town. Set on stage and in her hotel suite, Quilter’s play dramatises both the public face and private torment of a woman who was driving herself to her death through drink, prescription drugs and the psychological demons caused by a life spent in the public eye.
The play itself is compelling and illuminating, if a little uneven in structure at times. But its success or failure hangs, of course, entirely on its lead, and in this the production has come up trumps. Tracie Bennett steps up to the mark superbly in a stellar performance that puts the late great Garland back on a London stage.
Capturing the singer’s look and powerful voice to a tee, Bennett also has the physicality to portray the diminutive star. But what rage and passion can flow from such a tiny woman. Funny, petulant, childlike, rude, crass, desperate, Bennett at times resembles a wild animal that needs to be caged, a feat attempted by her soon-to-be fifth husband, Mickey Deans, and her droll, effeminate piano player Anthony, who has known her long enough to realise what a pointless exercise that is.
The point of Quilter’s play is to show both sides of the legend. In her hotel room Bennett gives us a woman pressured by her own fame, desperate for pills, or “grown-up candy”, to get her through the show, and as demanding a diva as ever there was, in her own quick-witted style. Asking her fiancé to go out and find her a roast dinner, she says cattily “just drive around until you smell gravy”.
Then, as William Dudley’s clever set reveals the band that accompanies her on stage, Bennett changes into Garland’s charismatic stage persona, the star adored by her fans. As the play progresses and Garland’s physical and mental state deteriorates behind the scenes, we see the reasons for her increasingly erratic behaviour on stage. Performing Come Rain Or Come Shine she resembles a manic, almost grotesque clown, lurching around the stage in a display that is pitiful and heartbreaking.
Of the rest of the four-strong cast, Stephen Hagan, as Mickey, is competent in an ambiguous role which never entirely explains the motives of a much younger man engaged to a woman who, albeit world-famous, is financially – and psychologically – ruined. As Anthony, Hilton McRae is at first a semi-silent cipher who becomes, in Act Two, a confidante for Garland, offering her a way out that she does not take.
That we know Garland’s eventual fate makes this piece poignant right from the beginning, but when she finally sings Somewhere Over The Rainbow, sitting in her black slip, make-up smeared, looking so far from the fresh-faced young girl she once was, Bennett gives us a final, tragic full stop.
CB