This year marks the 50th anniversary of Judy Garland's legendary Carnegie Hall concert. At 39, Garland should have been cruising comfortably through the prime of her career but instead found herself constantly scrambling back from personal and professional catastrophes. Insecurity, addictions, manipulative men and her own manic personality had chipped away at an indomitable will. And yet, the star took Carnegie Hall with such ferocity that the night lives as one of the greatest performances in show business history.
History Theatre is marking the event with a remount of its 2005 show "Beyond the Rainbow." Playwright William Randall Beard used the Carnegie Hall concert as a dramatic flywheel and David Lohman arranged 27 musical numbers that drive a whirlwind trip through Garland's life.
Director Ron Peluso smoothly allows the show to unfold and music director Jimmy Martin provides the production's buoyancy. But first things first. Jody Briskey reprises her role as Garland, the needy and mature singer who took the Carnegie stage (Kate Sutton-Johnson's simple runway that resembles a yellow brick road).
Briskey's is a signature performance that should not be missed. She has channeled Garland with all the breathy phrasing, the quavery voice, the tremulous upper lip and nervous energy; there is that slightly spastic leg kick, the left hand constantly brushing her hair from her brow.
Deeper, though, Briskey seems to die a little with each song. This abiding commitment reaches its zenith in "Swanee," which is nothing less than a reckless and astonishing display of ragged emotion and vocal power that stops the show.
As Briskey's Garland stays grounded in the Carnegie Hall moment, Norah Long does the heavy dramatic lifting of portraying "Judy" from the time she was tiny Frances Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minn., through the triumphs and the defeats of her life. Long and Briskey have a good stage synergy, particularly evident when they share "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," the song Judy sang to her dying father.
The lean, tall Long is a physical stretch to play the short, plump Garland. But her performance almost makes that disparity irrelevant as she interacts with her steel-spined mother (Cathleen Fuller) and suave second husband Vincente Minnelli (Peter Moore). Among the secondary characters, Clark Cruikshank makes the biggest impression with two variations on the thick-necked brute: producer Louis B. Mayer and third husband Sid Luft.
The script is not brilliant literature and the show could be trimmed by 20 minutes and come out stronger. However, Beard has wrought a brilliant entertainment from a character whom we find endlessly fascinating. It's an excellent example of a writer creating a blueprint that is lifeless until it is performed. And it is performed beautifully.
