Judy's Scary Little Christmas: Caught in the Act Review, New Hampshire

presented by Music & Drama Company

directed by George Hosker Bouley

Ah, Christmas; the season of magic. Let’s borrow some of that magic, shall we? Let it take us back in time to Christmas, 1959:

WWII and the Korean conflict are in the past.

Rock and roll is in its infancy.

Pantyhose had just been invented.

The United States is enjoying a period of unprecedented wealth and power, and a young, vigorous senator from Massachusetts with a lot of hopes and dreams for the betterment of the country is about to ascend to the Presidency.

On the entertainment front, Hollywood and Broadway are reaping the benefits of peacetime and prosperity. Three television networks hold dominion over the airwaves, and the stars of both the big and small screens are in their ascendancy.

One of those stars is Judy Garland, twenty years past her huge success as the child star of a legendary MGM musical based on a popular children’s book. She’s grown up pretty good- a darling of the movies, a singer racking up record sales in the millions, a beloved entertainer.

But by 1959, Judy’s had a few ups and downs. A couple of unhappy marriages, some bad career choices, health problems, and a reputation for being unstable- oh, and that little “problem” with pills and alcohol.

So when CBS-TV comes knocking with an offer to do a Christmas special, of course Judy jumps at it. It’s a great way to rehabilitate her flagging career and restore her to her legions of adoring fans.

Throw in a glittering holiday set on a CBS sound stage, a lot of seasonally-appropriate singing and dancing, enough scripted schmaltz to put Santa into a diabetic coma, and you’ve got a holiday special that’s guaranteed to bring even the most desperate diva back from the Land Of Has-Been.

Oh, and let’s not forget the guest stars! Only those at the top of their game will be asked to grace this celebrated event, and in 1959, there were several sterling examples of entertainment’s upper echelon: Bing Crosby. Liberace, Ethel Merman, Joan Crawford are all invited to attend.

And attend they will, along with some guests who are rather outside of the entertainment mainstream: playwright Lillian Hellman’s dropping by, as is Vice-President Richard Nixon…. and a special surprise guest- Death!

Yes, Death. And this is where JUDY’S SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS veers off the tracks like a trolley from hell, dragging this innocuous 50s television special into a bizarre land reminiscent of a Jack Warner fever dream and Sartre’s HIUS CLOS: stranger, funnier, and, at times, a lot more sinister.

Not only that, but the appearance of Death casts the reality of the moment into question: is this really 1959? Are we really on a sound stage? Is anyone really who they say they are?

To speak of what happens as each guest makes his or her way onto Judy’s special would be to give too much of the story away. Be assured, there’s plenty to occupy you- as with anything involving the legendary Judy Garland, there’s plenty of glamor and glitz, a clashing of egos, ribald industry stories, tender reminiscences about the old days, and, of course, a whole catalogue of musical numbers fit to beat the band.

Director George Hosker-Bouley keeps things moving along briskly. There’s a lot of old-school camp in the play, not to mention the vaunted bitchery that was associated with this particular group of entertainers, but Hosker-Bouley seems to have instilled the cast with a good sense of comic timing, not lingering on the jokes but letting them play out quickly before moving on.

Hosker-Bouley also doesn’t let the actors go too far over the top with their characters, which makes sense, since they’re all larger than life and to try to top what they were would give the actors no place to go with them. While there’s plenty of big comedy and characterization, there’s also allowance for introspection, which makes for a broader scope of interpretation.

Scenic elements are kept spare and mobile- set pieces recalling the lushly overblown style of the 50s are moved into place with the speed and efficiency of a real TV production. The songs are intelligent, cheeky and humorous, and add a refreshing bit of spice to the action.

Lights and sound are for the most part adequate, and costumes are excellently rendered, particularly those of Judy, which are nothing short of stunning.

Castwise, the actors serve the play well, given the fact that they’ve all been tasked with re-creating real people from recent history, all of whom are still relatively fresh in the minds of the American public, and all of whom had significant impact upon our culture.

Don LaDuke as Bing Crosby is perhaps the most consistent of the cast- he endows Crosby with a breezy style and his rich singing voice is reminiscent of the real thing. As Ethel Merman, Marian Mariangelli commands every scene she’s in- blowsy, bawdy, brassy and belligerent. “The Merm” thunders onstage and seizes it as if she were the bastard child of Alan Sherman and Bert Lahr- full of manic energy and a powderkeg of belly-laughs from beginning to end.

Michael Coppola is every bit the “winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love” that a London Daily Mirror columnist defined entertainer-musician Liberace as being; Meg Oolders is spot on as fading Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford, and Mary V. Case delivers as a stern yet salacious Lillian Hellman. Neil Blaiklock plays up Nixon’s undertaker image but manages to surprise by allowing us a peek at Nixon’s secret longing to be “one of the gang”. DJ Spinelli and Katherine Horrigan support well as a young sailor-slash-“dinner companion” and Judy's dresser respectively. Dave Kjellander brings the action to an unsettling, yet oddly humorous, level as Death.

As Judy Garland, Christine Frydenborg has arguably the toughest job of all- how do you portray a legend so firmly ingrained in the hearts and minds of living people, and one whose contribution to the American experience was nothing short of extraordinary?

No one can play Judy quite so well as Judy; the woman was, for most of her life, a force unto herself, and in the years since her death a legion of bad drag queens have tried to convince us that they’re the next best thing. We go along with the fiction because we know that while no one can replace her, even the worst Judy impersonator is at least trying to recall some of that incandescent talent that defined Judy Garland in her too-brief life, and in so doing, reminds us of what she was to us.

Frydenborg has a lot of help- she’s been dressed and made up within and inch of her life, and she’s an eerily accurate physical recreation of Judy herself. This is a triumph in and of itself, and major kudos to the makeup artist and costumer who doubtless put in long hours to bring the illusion to life.

But an illusion like this has to move, talk, and interact to be convincing, otherwise it’s nothing more than a one-dimensional portrait- better to frame it, hang it on the wall and leave it at that.

Happily, this isn’t the case. Frydenborg doesn’t try hard to convince us that she’s the living incarnation of Judy Garland, and in so doing, is able to relax into aspects of the character that are the most recognizable- Judy’s tics, her jittery demeanor, her nervy gesticulations.

This is the Judy we know, and remember; her way of connecting with a live audience, and how her sharp edges and prickly demeanor smoothed out as she launched into song. Frydenborg honors Judy by not trying to slip into a skin that doesn’t belong to her, but by bringing to the surface the traits that were the most beloved- and the most exasperating- aspects of Judy's personality.

Frydenborg brings to the stage a fresh interpretation of the icon by serving up small and poignant parts of the Judy that’s passed into memory, and instead of overwhelming us, captivates our hearts, and makes us remember not just the legend, but the woman who made the legend possible. It's an homage to the lady herself, and Frydenborg does a damn fine job.

As to the story itself, it’s rife with improbability; the only thing that excuses it is that it’s a play about a bunch of people who’ve been dead for years. It’s cursed with clunky plot elements, a heavy dependence on old Hollywood and Broadway stories to carry the action and a predisposition toward sly, campy in-jokes geared to a fraction of the general populace, but when it works, it works. This is never more evident than toward the close of the second act, when Judy gets to have a heart-to heart with Liberace’s young sailor.

That conversation crystallizes the play’s raison d'être, and it is this; JUDY’S SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS is a fan letter. Not just to Judy and her contemporaries, but a fan letter to all that they were- mostly that you can have feet of clay, but STILL be bigger than life.

Even when these people were in their darkest hours, gripped by addiction, rage, denial, or just plain loneliness, they managed to pull themselves together and step up to do the things that had to be done.

In so doing, they set an example to those who loved them, and showed WHY we loved them- that they wrestled their demons back into the shadows, if only for a short while, took their marks and delivered the goods, showing what was possible, even under the bleakest of circumstances.

They smiled their smiles, danced their dances, and sang their songs, even when they wanted nothing more than to crawl into the dark and die. That was their jobs, and they did it.

They did it for us, because without us, there wasn’t any reason to keep on going. And keep on going they did.

Judy Garland was the first of this improbable group to exit the stage. She died on June 22, 1969, in the midst of yet another comeback, valiantly attempting to climb out of the hole of drug addiction and financial ruin she was in by then.

Six days later, following her funeral in New York, the patrons of a gay bar in Manhattan rose up against the police to protest yet another raid on their establishment without cause. The incident has gone down in history as the Stonewall Riots, and it marks a moment in the history of humanity when a heretofore-underground movement finally burst out of the shadows, and with pride and purpose, gave itself a name: the gay rights movement.

Whether patrons of the Stonewall Inn were mourning Judy in the company of others like themselves has been a matter of debate for years. Certainly by the time of her death, Garland was well-established as a gay icon. It’s not hard to imagine that her image was invoked that early summer night in 1969, when, after years of brutal discrimination and prosecution, the gays had had enough and pushed back, sparking a groundswell for a movement that continues today.

If Garland’s name was on their lips that night or got woven into the fabric of legend after the fact, it doesn’t matter; who better to serve as an example of someone who fought the good fight, right to the very last?

That is part of Garland’s legacy, inextricably intertwined with those of her compatriots in entertainment- Bing, Liberace, Ethel, Joan. Lillian, and even Nixon. They are all icons of an age, and, in their own manner, examples of what is possible, even against what seems the most insurmountable of obstacles.

They taught us that we can, will and MUST do what we can to overcome that which threatens to consume and relegate us to the darkness. That is what they did, as much as they could, often to the bitter end. Because of the way they kept on, and the way they lived, we remember them, cherishing what they meant to us, years after they left us.

JUDY’S SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS plays like a fan letter from a star-struck kid- a bit jangly, full of cute, campy accolades, but earnest and endearing for all of that.

It’s a letter that expresses not only admiration but also gratitude for enduring. It was written with a great deal of respect for these people in spite of the darker aspect of their natures, and acknowledges that they left behind some wreckage without demonizing them for it.

Most of all, it’s a fan letter written by a kid who was inspired by these people and who holds what they taught him about how to endure close to his heart.

He remembers them with love, and has made up his mind to show his love for them in the form of a silly, zany, but ultimately very sweet tribute to their memory. Go see it.

JUDY’S SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS plays December 10-13 at the Janice B Streeter Theatre, 14 Court St., Nashua, NH. Visit the MAD Company website for more information.

Caught In The Act!

Friday, December 11, 2009