By John Lyle Belden
NOTE: Review also appears online with The Word (www.theygayword.com).
“Hi, I’m Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli’s mother.”
This is how the star, occupying the body of Georgeanna Teipen at Indy’s Buck Creek Playhouse, introduces herself to Ed (Steve Jerk) in the dressing room of Copenhagen’s Falconer Centre as they await what would be her final public concert, March 25, 1969. She then sends Ed on a fool’s errand so that she can be alone for the next hour to talk to us – across space, time and the fourth wall – about her life.
“The Property Known as Garland” was crafted by Billy Van Zandt from Garland’s actual words in interviews and dictations for a never-published memoir. Director D. Scott Robinson said a minimum of dramatic license was employed in the script. While he can’t say Judy’s stories were all true, because “she was a story-teller,” he said. “What you hear is what she actually said.” Robinson added that most aspects of her narrative, including her scandalous first pregnancy, are independently verifiable.
Robinson also said that while he was thrilled to get the rights to this show, he wouldn’t do it without Teipen as Garland. Fortunately, she was quick to say yes, he said. And indeed, from the short dark wig to the sassy attitude that sways from playful and wistful to maudlin and angry, she does – for 90 minutes, no intermission – become Judy Garland.
I must note that for those who are either eager for or cringing at the thought of her belting out full renditions of “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” or “Over the Rainbow,” it won’t happen. Teipen is spared inevitable comparisons to the legendary voice, as Judy saves it for her Danish audience.
Still, to hear her story, from little Frances Gumm and her sisters in vaudeville, through her time with MGM and Oz (including backlot Munchkin tales), up through her more recent triumphs (Oscar-nominated for “A Star is Born”) and trials (getting booed off the stage in Australia), is fascinating enough without song breaks. And in Teipen’s performance, we feel those highs and lows with her.
She touches on her appeal to LGBT audiences, including encounters with drag impersonators.
There is also a touch of irony, as she remarks on how each of her peers and rivals are “drunks” while waving her ever-refilling glass of Blue Nun dismissively. She has no problem with it, she says, except for having to switch from wine after being told, after liver surgery, that she could no longer consume hard liquor. And she laments how Marilyn Monroe was careless enough to overdose on pills, just months before she would die from a day of constant consumption of barbiturates.
There is just one weekend of performances left before the Garland glamour leaves us again. Find Buck Creek Players at 11150 Southeastern Ave., Acton Road exit off I-74; call 317-862-2270 or see www.buckcreekplayers.com.
