I once said that I’d be happy to see a moratorium on all bio-plays about Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas. But at least this musical play about Garland, written and directed by Ray Rackham, avoids the cliche image of a movie star and dramatic singer coming to a tragic end. By having three actors play Garland at different stages of her life and interweaving their stories, it reminds us of her achievements and deals with the causes, as well as the symptoms, of her decline.
The show is overlong, but provides a plausible picture of three different aspects of Garland. We first see her in 1963 when she is taping a 26-week series for CBS and battling with TV bosses who don’t know how to accommodate a living legend to the demands of the small screen. We are then reminded of her triumph at the Palace theatre, New York, in 1951 after the suspension of her contract with MGM (which she christened, after the amount she had made the studio, “My Goddamned Money”). Crucially, we also get to meet the child Garland of the late 1930s, who was the victim both of an exploitative industry and an ambitious mother who makes Mama Rose in Gypsy look like a shrinking violet.
The information may not be new but, by overlapping the three stories, Rackham not only celebrates Garland’s talent but shows how the seeds of her downfall were sown from the start. As a kid, she is self-consciously aware that she is “fat and freckled with caps on her teeth”: indeed it is her mother who force-feeds her pills to get her into shape for The Wizard of Oz. Given a father who never quite came out of the closet, we also understand why she fell for a strong, controlling figure like Sidney Luft who engineered her success at the Palace. If she became a difficult to handle figure by the time of her TV shows, the reasons are not far to seek.
The problem with all bio-shows, especially in an age when the past is available at the press of a button, is matching the imitation to the reality but the three actors put across a dozen songs with conviction. Helen Sheals is especially good as CBS Judy showing that, behind the supposed termagant, lay a true showbiz pro at the mercy of vacillating suits. Belinda Wollaston as Palace Judy pulls off the tricky task of reconciling the offstage pill-popping addict with the natural onstage performer. Lucy Penrose as Young Judy impressively combines prepubescent gaucheness with an instinctive musical gift. Among the rest of the cast, who act and play instruments with varying degrees of success, Don Cotter stands out as a cigar-chomping Louis B Mayer who suddenly turns his hand to percussion.
Even if there are no great revelations, the show reminds us how, in the conflict between a merciless industry and the hunger for love and life, a star is inevitably torn.
• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 30 July. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
