Last autumn Peter Quilter had a West End hit with Glorious!, a theatre biography of soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, who famously couldn't sing but who sold out New York's Carnegie Hall in 1944. Now he has a Fringe hit with this fictionalised version of the last miserable days of Judy Garland, as she attempts a comeback at London cabaret venue Talk of the Town.
This is a show that should have been sponsored by Kleenex. The trouble is that nobody seems to have noticed that Rainbow is Glorious! without the jokes, even down to the gay piano player. Florence's drug was the delusion that she could sing; Judy's fix was anything that came in a bottle and her "grown-up sweets" that made her sad, bad and very dangerous to know.
Part concert and part drama, Quilter's play threads the songs through Garland's life story as we see her caught between two men, a miserable past and no future. It is quite a glum affair, enlivened only by Garland's natural mordant wit. "Whenever I drink water I feel I'm missing out on something," she declares.
Glorious! worked because Maureen Lipman embraced it so whole-heartedly, and it's the same here: Caroline O'Connor - the diminutive Australian known to British audiences from Blonde Bombshells - is a big talent and a huge voice in search of a proper play. Often looking more like Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli, O'Connor socks it straight to your heart every time she sings, but doesn't have much else to do as the troubled diva except to sway around the room and announce: "I can handle myself." I have seen suitcases handle themselves better.
You long for a script that can find the comedy in the tragedy, and that goes beyond the well-rehearsed outlines of Garland's life and showcases her talent - not just her talent to destroy herself.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
