"Rainbow" Rocks!

As it is February the 14th, in the spirit of Valentines I felt obligated to write a post on love. However, because I am not feeling the least bit romantic, mushy, or sappy, instead of focusing on people I love, I'm going to mix it up and focus on things I love... well one thing, in particular: End of the Rainbow. The rest of this post will be me telling you why I love it. Love it a lot.


First and foremost, it surprised me. Having admittedly no prior knowledge of Judy Garland, and having also not done my research ahead of time and read up on the show (tisk, tisk Taylor), I was assuming it was a simple play about her life with some music thrown in for good measure. How wrong I was indeed... What it's actually about is her attempt at a comeback in 1968 while battling a whole mess of addictions. In short, it is a little bit like watching a train wreck (a beautiful train wreck as strange as that sounds) and if you want to be entertained, I mean really entertained, look no further. This may very well be the best show I've seen yet this season.

Biggest Success Factor: The cast. PHEN. NOM. MEN. AHL!!!! Tracie Bennett is ridiculous... I want to meet her and ask her how she has the energy to do that show night after night. I think she could have given the real Judy a run for her money - and without the drugs! According to my mom who attended with me, Bennett had Judy down pat. Being that I had no prior mental images to conjure up, I immediately ran home to YouTube after the show. Mom was right, as usual! See for yourself:

Tracie Bennett (for the purposes of my comparison you can skip ahead to about 8 minutes in although the entire interview is quite good):



Judy Garland:


Pretty damn good if you ask me! However, I would be remiss if I didn't also mention Michael Cumpsty (Anthony) and Tom Pelphrey (Mickey Deans). What I think I love most about this particular cast is that each actor is a power house in their own right. Sure Bennett steals the show, but she's supposed to. The scenes where Mickey is at his wits end from fighting with Judy, or Anthony is trying desperately to save her are all masterfully executed. Pelphrey gives the show an element of desperation that is offset by Cumpsty's calm demeanor and the balance between the three is brilliant. The photo below is one of my favorites, I think that the facial expressions are particularly wonderful.

In an attempt to keep things brief, as there is little out there that hasn't already been said about how fantastic this play is, I will say this: I went from being not really overly excited to see the show, to wanting to go a second (and maybe even third) time. You can bet I will be hitting the rush line before the show closes on March 11. See you there?

Later days, you know you made me love you...

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 | |

 

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

brilliant blog and glad you love it as much as we do in the UK and many fans of the show have seen these time and time again Its addictive

February 16, 2012 at 10:08 PM  

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