If rainbows were roller coasters, then Tracie Bennett takes you on the ride of your life!  Her enactment of Judy Garland, age forty-seven and at the end of her rope (and rainbow), careens between the dizzying heights of her breath-taking talent and her death-defying descent into desperation, tantrums, booze, and drugs. Peter Quilter’s bio-drama (ably directed by Terry Johnson) is set in 1968-69 London where Judy is scheduled for a five-week comeback engagement.  The show moves smoothly between the hotel suite Judy shares with her handsome, much younger fiancé/manager Mickey Deans (the handsome, masculine Tom Pelphrey) and and the Talk of the Town night club, where Judy is attracting a sell-out crowd (partly due to the publicity generated by her standing on the suite’s baby grand piano and threatening to throw herself out the window. The piano anchors hotel suite and nightclub orchestra (scenic/costume design by William Dudley) and is nimbly played by Anthony (the terrific Michael Cumpsty) Judy’s devoted, long-suffering, gay accompanist (plus volunteer makeup artist/confessor/caretaker). It’s Mickey’s and Tony’s job to keep Judy off the pills and in the spotlight.  Mickey sets her up with a BBC radio interviewer (Jay Russell) named Donald.  “As in duck?” Judy mocks before she cuts the interview short.   Her nightclub shows are more spine-tingling – both for Bennett’s spot-on reenactment of Judy’s pyrotechnic performance, stage fright, memory lapses, and the looming possibility of public collapse and disgrace. As Quilter’s “Rainbow” arcs toward its climax, Mickey, desperate for Judy to pull them out of their financial hole, feeds her drugs and booze – anything to get her on stage.  Anthony offers an escape into asexual domesticity with him as her caretaker.  Which will she choose? As the world knows, Judy never made it to forty-eight.  She picked Mickey Deans as husband #5 and slid off the rainbow into show business immortality.  (Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44th Street, NYC (212) 239-6200) Happiness/Success Habits Every ride has a ticket price – is the thrill worth the fee?  It’s not clear how much control Garland had – at least not at this late stage.  Most of us don’t have her phenomenal gifts or her demons.  But we do make choices about our own talents, temptations, and intimates. Up close and personal, charismatic, outrageous divas (and divos) can be exhilarating but exhausting.   I like my drama-mamas on stage – not off.  How about you?

Susan (“Dr. Sue”) Horowitz, Ph.D.

Book: “Queens of Comedy” (Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, and more!) www.smashwords.com/books/view/219367 Musical: “SssWitch”: www.ssswitch.net  www.YouTube.com/drsuecomedian https://www.youtube.com/feed/my_videos