Why would Lou Tyrrell bring to his Theatre at Arts Garage a play that he presented at Florida Stage seven years ago?
“We are really more in audience development mode than we are in play development mode,” he says of his fledgling Delray Beach operation. And if ever there were a show to attract and expand his audience, it is surely Beyond the Rainbow, a well-crafted biography of the legendary Judy Garland with two stellar performers as the self-destructive singer-actress.
Returning from that earlier production are leather-lunged Jody Briskey, who all but channels Garland, physically and vocally, delivering some two dozen numbers from her fabled 1961 comeback concert at Carnegie Hall, and Norah Long as a younger version of Judy, who acts out the tabloid memories, the drug and alcohol-fueled career highlights and depths that come to mind as the older Garland “sings ’em all and stays all night” for her adoring fans.
As good as the show is, it is those twin performances that are sensational, the reason that Beyond the Rainbow should not be missed. Garland once said “my life is in my music,” so playwright William Randall Beard uses that Carnegie Hall concert and its playlist to examine her bittersweet, personally and professionally abused existence, conveniently stopping eight years short of her tragic death.
In between Briskey’s powerful song stylings, Long and a cast of three supporting players act out her unhappy childhood, the unfeeling treatment of studio executives like Louis B. Mayer, her battles with addiction, her doomed marriages to Vincente Minnelli and Sid Luft, and her up-and-down film career.
Like Garland, Briskey’s vocal talent is evident from the first time she opens her mouth. Her mimicry skills — the slurred diction, the flat Midwest cadences and the nervous tics and gestures — are a welcome bonus.
While Briskey dominated the earlier production in Manalapan, Long has become a confident stage presence in her own right since then, turning Beyond the Rainbow into a compelling duet. Early on she appears in Dorothy Gale pigtails and pinafore, a child-woman caught in the cogs of the Hollywood machine. Long is not only the soul of the show, but a very credible singer as well.
Ron Peluso, artistic director of Minnesota’s Great American History Theatre, commissioned Beyond the Rainbow and staged it there and at Florida Stage. This time around, he attempts to use the cabaret space of the Arts Garage, wending his cast in among the tables environmentally. It is the only false step of the production, working against the recreation of Carnegie Hall and diffusing the focus of the show, as the audience is forced to keep looking around instead of viewing in at once the onstage images and memories.
Still, Beyond the Rainbow is a compelling piece of show business lore, an unflinching portrait of one of the 20th century’s towering entertainers, wrapped around a concert of Garland’s many signature songs.
BEYOND THE RAINBOW: GARLAND AT CARNEGIE HALL, The Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach. Through Sunday, Aug. 18. Tickets: $30-$40. Call: (561) 450-6357.