Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Kathy St. George

What can you say about Kathy St. George and Judy Garland, except "it's almost like being in love"? And doesn't love, like hope, spring eternal? Thus Miss St. George (at left, photo by Neil Reynolds) has again returned to her idol's altar, for a second shot at capturing the magic that was missing from "Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Judy Garland," her one-woman show devoted to the show-biz legend two seasons ago. And this year's model, "Dear Miss Garland," re-tooled with the help of fellow friend-of-Dorothy Scott Edmiston (and his design team), is a marked improvement over the earlier version, although like its predecessor, its "concert" half is still stronger than its "dramatic" half.

But first, for the record, this is not exactly an impersonation; it's more an evocation. St. George is just Garland's height, and bears a passing resemblance to the late star, and her voice - a light, flexible contralto - has a touch of Garland's brass. But St. George can't really summon the anguished wail that Judy had at her beck and call; the deep, unstable fire that made Garland Garland only flickers in St. George's stylings (although she closely matches her idol's phrasing). What St. George has, however, is something like Garland's joyous release in the throes of performance; the strange yin/yang of the singer's oddly blank, hopeful approach to the audience, and then the confident, almost manic high that followed once she'd seduced it, is the thrilling core of "Dear Miss Garland."

Of course it's hard not to succumb to a manic high given the songs that, as Garland, St. George gets to sing. Few chanteuses could claim such a catalogue: "The Man That Got Away," (below) "The Trolley Song," "Get Happy," "Almost Like Being in Love," "A Couple of Swells," "Chicago," and of course that ultimate piece of yearning pop catnip, "Over the Rainbow" - they're all here, in a second act that pretends to re-produce Judy's legendary Carnegie Hall comeback in 1961. It doesn't, not really (leave that to Rufus Wainwright, guys), but this hardly matters, because the band (led by the unflappably talented pianist Jim Rice) is so smoothly capable, the set, props and costumes so appropriate, and the atmosphere so wittily, romantically adult. St. George kicks up her heels - and captures Judy's comic manner and movement even better than she does her voice - and the audience is happy to follow her into orbit (even singing along heartily to "For Me and My Gal"). There probably isn't a more satisfying musical evening for grown-ups to be had this summer in the Hub.


Judy in all her mannered greatness: "The Man That Got Away," shot in one long, glorious take by George Cukor, in A Star is Born.

And the evening's first half is always amusing, although it doesn't quite crack the conceptual nut that the show's moniker, "a theatrical concert," poses. This hints at a glimpse into what made the great Garland tick - and thus the last version of the show tried to give us the star at both top and the bottom her form, with a scene based on croaking, bombed-out confessions made near the end of her career. Well, that didn't work - neither St. George, nor, really, her audience, had the stomach for just how far down Garland could really go. New director Edmiston's solid, show-biz instincts have led to a a complete revamp of that sequence into an endearing, though nudging, trip down memory lane, complete with a whirlwind five-minute tour of The Wizard of Oz in which St. George gives the movie's central tornado a run for its money. Still, so much is left out - the gay husbands, the abortions, the suicidal gestures, the many lies (only the drugs are given any rueful stage time) - that this time around the material winds up feeling charmingly thin, in Edmiston's usual, gently-censored mode. The sequence only reaches one other peak after The Wizard of Oz, with a haunting little dance to "Me and My Shadow."

Oh well, perhaps in its inevitable third iteration just the right balance will be struck in the show's first half. And in the end, "what made Judy tick" is right on stage anyhow, when St. George tears into "Almost Like Being in Love" or any of a half-dozen other standards. But just btw (not that anybody asked), next time around can we please retire "Swanee" (the Al Jolson number that Judy hung onto long after it had begun to feel a little creepy)? And I'm not sure the extended "Somewhere There's a Someone" sequence from A Star is Born works without the movie's staging. And in the first half, how about working in Gershwin's "But Not for Me," or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"? Sigh. In case you can't tell, I'm something of a Garland fanatic myself.

Post-Impressionism

Although Judy Garland all but haunts our pop history, she proves a recalcitrant ghost for the first half of "And Now Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Judy Garland," the one-woman show featuring Kathy St. George (at left) as the down-and-out but indomitable chanteuse. St. George and director Tony McLean (who developed and produced the show) have clearly tried to distinguish their efforts from those of the many female impersonators who have donned cocktail drag and tremblingly belted "Over the Rainbow" to appreciative crowds. And for good reason - the king of these impressionists, Jim Bailey, once actually got Liza Minnelli to squeal, "It's Momma!" (she later did a gig with him in Vegas). Even Bailey only approximated Garland's look, but he nailed her lushly brassy sound.

Of course these days female impersonation has gone post-modern: Rufus Wainwright recently re-staged Judy's celebrated Carnegie Hall concert completely on his own terms -perhaps because Judy's talent, one of the greatest of the twentieth century, attracted some of the greatest material of said century. St. George benefits from the same strength: after a wobbly first half, in which she tries to play the "real" Garland (reading verbatim some notoriously dishy tapes she recorded for her autobiography), St. George settles back gloriously into Garland's stage persona for the second half, and delivers knockout renditions of such standards as "Almost Like Being in Love," "The Trolley Song," "The Man That Got Away," "A Couple of Swells," and, of course, "Over the Rainbow." Alas, despite an admirable simulation of Judy's mannerisms (the spastic fluffing of the hair, the splayed palm inching skyward), the illusion that Garland is actually standing before us never quite takes hold - but the sense that St. George is channeling Judy's energy is more than palpable (she's most Garlandesque, actually, in her comic repartee - some funny bits while changing behind a stage trunk, in fact, mark precisely a transition from Kathy to Judy and back).

As for that lame first half - it's most interesting as proof of Judy's personal wit, even in an apparently bombed-out state (not for nothing was she a favorite on talk shows back when they were about conversation). St. George gets her laughs, true, but she seems tentative in her physicalization, and simply unwilling (perhaps because of McLean's idolization of the star?) to take us as low as Judy was known to go. The burnt-out croak we briefly hear on tape is a sad testament to Garland's personal wreckage, but St. George, declaiming the same lines, may be blue but is clearly unbroken (even though the core of the piece is the contrast between the bright lights of Garland's onstage life and the dark depths of her offstage one). If this is an attempt to play "the role of Judy Garland" (as director McLean puts it), then St. George's performance, alas, isn't even a patch on the Emmy-winning turn by Judy Davis in the TV movie Me and My Shadows.

Ah, but then there's that concert, with St. George, ably accompanied by Tim Evans, at the top of her form - at times she almost jumps for joy in her nosebleed heels. McLean and his Backyard Productions have spent some money on the show, so we even get the signature wall-o-bulbs spelling out JUDY, and credible facsimiles of the props and costumes immortalized by the kinescopes of her shows and appearances. It's here that the love McLean and St. George have for their idol, which held them back in Act I, completely pays off - in the end, zing, zing, zing go our heartstrings, and we have to admit that Judy Garland is not the one that got away.