I’m going to say some negative things about End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s play about Judy Garland’s last years. But bear this in mind-- Tracie Bennett who plays Garland, is a great singer, actress, dancer and athlete, and, when she is singing (which takes a while to get to), she rocks the house with both her voice and her performance, which captures nuances of Garland and gives us a geschrei from deep inside her agonized soul. In Act 2 her athleticism approaches Cirque dimensions. Her singing gives us a great performance that will win Ms Bennett a Tony nomination and probably the Tony.
However, we are not amused at all by the slow opening of the show and the annoying, over-written characterization. As Bette Davis might have said, “What a bitch!” There is a poorly-written piece about pills — should she take some or not, and an annoyingly repetitive drunk scene as she fights to destroy herself. But as the rest of us know, you can’t argue with a drunk while they are drunk. This out-of-control addict should have been hospitalized, and the scenes of self-destruction, in which Garland displays her illness, redundantly, gets tiring.
Still, Bennett gives a helluva performance. Plus, she’s joined by two co-stars: a terrific Michael Cumpsty in an in-depth performance as her gay piano accompanist, and a rather flat (but good-looking) Tom Pelphrey as her fiancé/manager.
Strongly directed and staged by Terry Johnson, with a magnificent flexible, stylized set by William Dudley who also designed the splendid costumes, and fine lighting by Christopher Akerlind, you need patience to get to the good part, but it’s there, in Bennett’s physical and vocal performance.
