End of the Rainbow at Sky City Theatre

5:00AM Monday November 12, 2007
By Paul Simei-Barton

Ellie Smith in End of the Rainbow

REVIEW
What: End of the Rainbow.
Where: Sky City Theatre.
Reviewer: Paul Simei-Barton.

The end-of-year show of the Auckland Theatre Company anatomises the final year of Judy Garland's tumultuous life as she plants herself in the London Ritz and strains to pull off yet another comeback with a punishing cabaret season.

The trajectory of her drug-fuelled meltdown takes her through territory familiar to present-day celebrities.

Playwright Peter Quilter finds a rich vein of humour in the wreckage of Garland's life and the dialogue is peppered with brilliantly witty aphorisms and acerbic observations.

In the lead role, Ellie Smith shows wonderful comic timing in her delivery of these bons mots and brings us as close as we are likely to get to the magic of the diva's legendary concerts.

The backstage drama places Garland at the apex of a love triangle with her fifth husband and manager Mickey Deans in one corner while the other is claimed by her pianist, who is a composite character representing the devotion of Garland's gay fan base.

Paul Barrett in the role gives a nuanced performance that avoids clichéd gay mannerisms and movingly evokes the humiliation of a character who offers Garland the obsessive, unconditional loyalty of a true fan.

Edwin Wright's Mickey Deans provides a striking contrast with his whatever-it-takes approach to handling the whirlwind of Garland's emotional and financial crisis.

The production design features a seamless collaboration between John Parker and Tony Rabbit that sees the creamy elegance of Parker's set juiced up with the bold colours and lively shadow play of Rabbit's lighting.

In the finale performance of Over the Rainbow, Garland is launched into the audience on a moving bridge while blue footlights project her shadow on the cavernous walls of the auditorium.

The image beautifully reinforces the intense yearning of the melody that lets Garland rise above the chaos of her private life and find a kind of radiance in her remarkable ability to connect with the audience.

 

   From GayNZ.com

Performance
Review: Ellie Smith's tribute to Judy Garland
By Larry Jenkins
10th November 2007 - 06:31 pm

Ellie Smith as Judy Garland

 

End of the Rainbow - a play in two acts by Peter Quilter, Director Colin McColl. Starring Ellie Smith, Paul Barrett, and Edwin Wright, with James Jennings, at Sky City Theatre, Auckland.

It's 1967. Judy Garland, legend of screens silver and small, goddess of gays, drug and alcohol addict, megalomaniac, is making the theatrical equivalent of Custer's Last Stand at London's Talk of the Town.

Judy, aged 45, in love with much younger Mickey Dean, a Los Angeles club owner, has returned to her favourite town to revive her almost-dead career, killed off by her unstable and erratic behaviour on film sets, television shows and stages throughout the world and resulting in massive debt. This is the situation when she bursts ebulliently through the door of one of London's posh hotels with her lover/manager to open Peter Quilter's rather flawed End of the Rainbow, now showing at Auckland's Sky City Theatre.

Judy, in the person of Ellie Smith, is suffering drug and alcohol withdrawal, as her new-found paramour (played with utter dedication and conviction by Edwin Wright, fast becoming one of New Zealand's top actors) bullies and pushes her to succeed in the five-week season at the famous London club without either. Little does he know that his ambitions for her are futile and that in a lifetime of getting her way, both on the set and off, she's become crafty, stubborn, and as devious as any other devout addict at finding substances to abuse, no matter what precautions he takes. Add to the mix her old gay friend and accompanist Anthony Chapman (Paul Barrett), who feels that he knows best for Judy, that he's propping her up on stage and in real life and has done so for years, and you have a potent triangle awash with jealousy and resentment and, to boot, a nitro-glycerine-head as its focus.

All this would be fascinating if it really worked, but something vital is missing and that's, as the old song goes, "You gotta have heart." We're not really allowed to sympathise with any of these people, other than to marvel at Judy's ability to self-destruct, to cynically dismiss Mickey when he begins to supply Garland with drugs and alcohol to get her through a season which has turned utterly to custard, and to gape open-mouthed as the gay Chapman declares undying love for her and tries to convince her to run away and let him be her man.

As performances, though, it's another ballgame, met not in St. Louis, as in Ms Garland's favourite film, but right there on Sky City's stage. Ellie Smith exudes STAR quality, much as did Judy herself – onstage and in interviews a charmer and a wooer of her adoring public, offstage a cunning, foul-mouthed harridan of monstrous magnitude despite her authentic diminutiveness, richly at one point describing the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, none of whom she exactly towered over, as "little tiny people." She delivers song after song with idiomatic accuracy, and indeed in her lower register often sounds eerily like the real thing. The way she prances nervously, yanking microphone cords and power-punching out the lyrics, is studiedly authentic, reminiscent of the way Garland could deliver the simplest song with great conviction, each one as if it were her last. C'mon Get Happy, The Trolley Song and of course Over the Rainbow all had impact, though the placement of that song, at the very end of the play, with Ellie jutting out into the audience on a runway which then rose into the air at the last cadence, was a bit of cheap theatre.

Paul Barrett's effete characterisation of the muso was astonishing, as was his piano playing (which, if not him, was uncannily synched). His mannerisms (the constant attack on his drooping long hair, the way he seemed to accordion rather than sit down, the limp-wrists) were never overdone but felt entirely natural, and his familiarity with the Tin Pan Alley idiom was obvious.

Edwin Wright did his Brooklyn accent consistently, and his portrayal of the arrogant but out-of-his-depth Mickey came closest of all three players to evoking any sort of concern. UNITEC drama student James Jennings was the eye candy for the show, in the small role of bellhop and in the trio of male dancers (the other two being Wright and Barrett) in the "encore" number at show's end. He's a good little dancer, too.

Direction by Colin McColl was meticulous and detailed, and John Parker's marvellous set, lit ravishingly by Tony Rabbitt, vied with the actors for stardom. Rachael Walker has costumed the play with great attention to detail, even including the famed sequined pants-suit made for Garland's role in the film Valley of the Dolls from which she was fired in 1967 and replaced by Susan Hayward. Vicky Haughton's choreography is crucial to the play, both for Ellie Smith and for the guys at the end. She has helped recreate Garland's pony-like pacings from one side of the stage to the other, pouring out her heart in song while seeming to need to take sole possession of the stage.

End of the Rainbow continues at Auckland SkyCity Theatre until 2 December 2007. Book at the Auckland Theatre Company website linked below.



© Copyright GayNZ.com

 

 

ENERGY, FLAIR AND FAILING HEALTH: A TRIUMPH

End Of The Rainbow
by Peter Quilter
Miss Ellie Smith as Judy Garland
directed by Colin McColl
AUCKLAND THEATRE COMPANY
the New Zealand Post season

at SKYCITY Theatre, Auckland
Until 8 Dec 2007

Reviewed by Kate Ward-Smythe, 12 Nov 2007
Since seeing The New Zealand Post season of End of the Rainbow on Friday night, I've had Garland's infectious hit, 'Get Happy' buzzing round and round in my head. I've also googled "Judy Garland" far too often. In 3 seconds, (despite the fact that I seem to live in a broadband black hole), my mac finds 1.72 million hits. She's addictive.

Unlike many of today's over night 'stars' and tabloid celebrities, (some famous just for being famous), this diminutive Hollywood icon paid her dues over and over and over again, starting with her 1924 stage debut at her father's theatre, singing Jingle Bells at the age of 2. During her illustrious career, she won kudos, Academy Awards and the hearts of millions, when at the age of 16; she sang what was to become her signature tune, Over the Rainbow, as Dorothy in MGM's The Wizard of Oz.

16 was also her approximate age when MGM's studio doctor perfected the dosage and mix of 'uppers' and 'downers', prescribed to Garland, presumably under her and her mother's misconception that they were in her best interests to take, so that the producers could keep Garland tuned to their gruelling filming schedule and their perception of a young woman's ideal weight.

By aged 20, her life was awash in legally prescribed drugs - she was addicted to a daily cocktail: appetite suppressing amphetamines, pills to make her sleep, pills to keep her awake... Seconal, barbiturates.... She compounded the mix by washing it all down with alcohol. By the time she died aged 47 of an accidental overdose, she was taking Valium and 20 Ritalin tables a day.

Peter Quilter's frank yet compelling script, set in 1968, during Garland's "Talk of the Town" season in London, combined with Ellie Smith's brilliant performance and director Colin McColl's strong supporting cast, capture the demise and agony of these last years of Garland's manufactured life, driven by a need for performance and prescription drugs, perfectly.

Ellie Smith delivers the roller coaster ride that the role demands, with devastating accuracy. She shows us a Garland that could be up and witty, appearing bullet proof and on top of her game at times. Yet throughout her performance, she gives a sense that underneath the façade, the Diva is worn out, spent and stuffed - she is a vulnerable, lost drug addict.

Because Quilter serves up Garland's contradictions- her yearning for a normal life thwarted by her need to perform; her love of the limelight even when some nights before stepping on stage she was a petrified bag of nerves and self doubt - often using Garland as her own narrator, it makes the play profoundly human. When she simply states, "I can't do this" and "I just can't stop" while lying in a heap of bile, the blunt honesty of this broken soul and the ugly affects of the demons that put her there, hit home. You cannot help but be drawn into Judy Garland's story.

Edwin Wright, playing Mickey Deans, gives an intelligent performance. We are never quite sure if his motivations are in Garland's best interests, or his own. You're left with the impression that he feels great pity for her, but not unconditional love.

Similarly, actor and musician Paul Barrett, playing Garland's Musical Director and pianist Anthony Chapman, shows his adoration of Garland, perfectly. Even in a deliciously awkward scene, in which he proclaims love for Garland, it is clear that he, like so many, idolises the star, rather than loves the woman.

Wright and Barrett strike up an excellent rapport, as their characters form an unlikely, albeit brief alliance, against the addict's manipulation, volatility and bad behaviour. However, as the initial mistrust and accusations return and the bond is lost, both actors show subtle, expert craft.

Barrett and Smith are at ease, and exude effortless comic timing during an early scene, rehearsing at the piano. Comfortable and relaxed as musician and singer, and enjoying witty banter, Quilter sets up a false hope here, and his script is full of hilarity and flippancy. He reminds us that Garland was insightful, charming and smart. Considering the time, as a woman, she was a groundbreaking comedienne and raconteur. For a while you forget Garland is a train wreck about to unfold.

McColl's creative team are a triumph.

John Parker's set, a Hotel suite, complete with grand piano, characterises the place and period very well. Because it is positioned quite far downstage, and on a rake, he has achieved the almost impossible: he has made the Skycity Theatre feel intimate. Parker's flow of curtains and half curtains, and the authentic dropping of one of the lighting bars at the end of a "Talk Of The Town" concert, means the audience seamlessly travel from back stage, side of stage, to the auditorium and back again, giving us a clear appreciation of how different Garland's life was on the other side of the cloth.

Musical Director and arranger Penny Dodd's sublime work is realised through pre recorded tracks, featuring the excellent musicianship of 19 players, who bring to life some of Garland's most loved tracks in a way that compliments Quilter's story, Garland's style and Smith's vocal prowess through a knowledgeable blend of authenticity and reinterpretation. For example, Dodd's bold end to Over The Rainbow denotes Garland's emptiness rather than hope. By contrast, Swanee is a ripper, true to the original, and Smith is simply on fire.

Fans of Garland's musical performances will not be disappointed, as Dodd's crowd pleasing medley of still more of her hits, is seamlessly arranged and sung with plenty of energy and flair by Smith.

While Dodd's guidance has Smith in fine voice for this production, the actress gives her Garland a vulnerable glissando in slower, more intimate numbers, which further highlights Garland's failing health.

Lighting design by Tony Rabbit is rich in colour, lush, beautiful and at times seems to evoke the promised land at the end of the rainbow. By contrast, as Smith spills her guts in The Man That Got Away, Rabbit throws her into blue light and a melancholy mood. He makes another clear statement near the end of the play, as a broken Garland crawls on her knees, then slowly picks herself up, bashes into the curtain, then staggers around, bewildered. Rabbit hits the frail figure in a single blinding white spotlight: an interrogating reminder that her show must go on.

Costume designer Rachael Walker drapes Smith in various fabulous sequined sparkly numbers, and the men look suitably chic for the 60's. But her genius touches are first, Anthony's long hair and thick glasses, and second, the razzle-dazzle of Get Happy, with the men decked out in tails (including James Jennings, who plays a small role as a Hotel worker), framing Smith, dressed in a cute tailored jacket.

Choreographed by Vicky Haughton and with committed performances from all, McColl uses the show-stopping Get Happy as a post curtain-call coda to ensure the night ends on an upper.

Later my mind wandered to Amy Winehouse and I wondered if, half a century on, today's entertainment industry is any wiser than Garland's.

FOOTNOTE - Just to reiterate the obvious for the benefit of the woman who I would name and shame if I knew who she was: Lady - It is not just polite, courteous, standard practice and etiquette to turn your cellphone or pager off when you enter a theatre, it is essential. Put yourself in Ellie Smith's shoes: One of her most intimate scenes on Friday night was ruined by your cellphone. What made it so unforgivable was that it was the second time your phone had gone off. If you hadn't made such a hasty exit at the end of the play, there would've been a bunch of us lining up to throttle you in the foyer.