Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland
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Bennett Plays Garland in London Rainbow, 22 Nov

As previously tipped, two-time Whatsonstage.com Award winner Tracie Bennett will reprise her performance as Judy Garland in the West End transfer of Peter Quilter’s “play with music” End of the Rainbow. After a run at the Theatre Royal Northampton this past February, the production, directed by Terry Johnson, will open on 22 November 2010 (previews from 15 November) at Trafalgar Studios 1, where it’s initially booking until 5 March 2011.

It’s December 1968 and Judy Garland is about to make her comeback... again. In a London hotel room with her young new fiancé at her side, Garland battles with a tornado of drugs and alcohol as she undertakes an exhausting series of concerts at the Talk of the Town to try and reclaim her crown as the greatest talent of her generation. Despite a series of failed marriages and a wrecked Hollywood career, Judy remains a tough, compelling, remarkable woman always armed to the teeth with her legendary razor-sharp wit.

Garland died in London following an accidental drugs overdose on 22 June 1969, aged 47. Quilter’s musical drama about her final months includes several of her best-known songs, including “Get Happy”, “Come Rain or Come Shine”, “The Trolley Song”, “The Man That Got Away” and, from The Wizard of Oz, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

End of the Rainbow had its world premiere in July 2005 at Sydney Opera House and proved a sell-out hit there and in Melbourne, with another Whatsonstage.com Award winner, Australian Caroline O'Connor, who reprised her performance for the show’s UK premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in August 2006, when it was previously expected to transfer (See The Goss, 19 Jun 2006).

However, Tracie Bennett isn’t exactly a stranger to the role. She appeared in an earlier incarnation of Quilter’s play at London’s New End Theatre in 2001, when it ran under the title of The Last Song of the Nightingale and the American diva was unnamed though a thinly disguised version of Garland. Quilter’s other credits include the Boyband and Glorious!, both of which also had West End seasons.

More recently, Bennett has been busy in the West End, winning Whatsonstage.com Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for first Hairspray and then La Cage aux Folles. The latter was also directed by Terry Johnson. Johnson’s many other directing credits include The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Rain Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and his own plays Piano/Forte, Hitchcock Blonde and Dead Funny.

Joining Bennett in the West End cast are Hilton McRae and Stephen Hagan, reprising their Northampton performances as, respectively, Garland’s musical director and her fiancé-turned-fifth husband Mickey Deans. The production is designed by William Dudley, with sound by Gareth Owen, lighting by Simon Corder and musical direction by Gareth Valentine. It’s presented in the West End by Lee Dean, Jenny Topper, Laurence Myers, Charles Diamond and Hilary Williams in association with Royal & Derngate, Northampton.

- by Terri Paddock

Related Content

Booking Tickets & Show Listings
	End of the Rainbow Listing Page

Internal Links
	Bennett Plays Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow - 8th Jan 2010 News
	End of the Rainbow for O’Connor in March??? - 2nd Dec 2005 Gossip
	End of the Rainbow for O’Connor in March??? - 2nd Dec 2005 Gossip
	O’Connor’s Rainbow in West End Post-Edinburgh??? - 19th Jun 2006 Gossip
	Bennett Is Garland Again, End of the Rainbow Tours - 23rd Jun 2011 news
	Simon Callow Is Being Shakespeare at Trafalgar - 25th Apr 2011 news
	Donmar Announces Second Trafalgar Residency - 21st Apr 2011 news
	Only the Beginning for End of the Rainbow??? - 29th Mar 2011 gossip
	Bennett's Garland Shines Through Rainbow - 7th Jan 2011 blog
	End of the Rainbow - 23rd Nov 2010 reviews
	Review Round-up: Critics Find Gold at Rainbow - 23rd Nov 2010 roundup
	1st Night Photos: Judy Brought to Life by Bennett - 23rd Nov 2010 photos
	Past/Present/Future for ... Tracie Bennett - 16th Nov 2010 interviews

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