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Newcomer Debbie Saloman makes a big impact with a powerful performance as the legendary Judy Garland in Get Happy |
A bright future, over the rainbow
GET HAPPY
King’s Head
JUDY Garland’s story is one of precocious talent, failed marriages, substance abuse and showbiz cruelty.
But despite it all, Debbie Saloman’s one-woman show maintains, Judy (the star of such films as The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St Louis) was not the pill-popping misery guts her tragic legacy would have us believe.
Opening on a bare black stage, Judy arrives early for a rehearsal for her now-legendary comeback show at the London Palladium in 1960. “I can’t believe I’m early,” she quips. “If I’m not careful I might lose my bad reputation.”
And well she might. Over the next hour and a half, Saloman’s Judy is the epitome of charm, wit and talent. The 23-year-old actress is a huge presence, filling the small performance space with infectious enthusiasm, gleefully bitchy asides and a voice to knock the angels out of the heavens.
All of Garland’s ticks and twitches are perfectly emulated, from the rotary jaw to the lilting rise and fall of her chatter, but it does not seem fair, or accurate, to simply judge Saloman’s performance on how well she mimics her predecessor.
With each of Garland’s signature tunes – The Man That Got Away, When You’re Smiling, Get Happy – it becomes clear this celebration of one star may well be the making of another.
Saloman’s talent easily overshadows the stock problems of one man shows – the crowbarred information and egocentric ramblings – and when she finally sings the hackneyed classic Somewhere Over The Rainbow (the song she said “followed her like a black cloud”) it feels fresh, beautiful and full of fragile hope.
Until Aug 26
Tel: 020 7226 1916 |
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