End Of The Rainbow: Tale of Judy Garland's troubled life hits Cork stage
Anna Jane Casey as Judy Garland in Judy – End of the Rainbow. Picture: Ste Murray
focuses on the final months of Hollywood icon Judy Garland’s tumultuous life. Set in London in 1969 where the troubled star struggled to complete a run of concerts at the Talk of the Town nightclub, director Conor Hanratty, says the show is an opportunity to have a look at Garland at her best and perhaps her worst.
“It’s a very humanising piece. You get to see her knocking out some of her most famous hits,” says Hanratty of a musical play in which English star Anna Jane Casey takes on the lead role.
Audiences will get an insight into the daily life of Garland behind the curtain. She was engaged to Mickey Deans and married him three months before her death at the age of just 47, due to an accidental overdose of barbiturates. It was her fifth marriage.
Garland, insecure about her looks and plagued by mental health difficulties and addiction, signed up to the nightclub as a means of making money to funnel into her debts.
“She didn’t cover herself in glory. Her contract wasn’t necessarily a kind of big ‘comeback’, a term that we use all the time now," says Hanratty. "This would have been an approach towards Garland’s comeback. But she had been through so much. Our show is an artistic impression of that period in London. Her fiancé is a real character in the show (with whom Garland bickers a lot) while there is also an amalgamation of other people involved in her life at the time.
"She had been on uppers and downers. The Hollywood system had put her through the mill for over three decades. Her system was not one that was in great shape. We’ve been reading biographies about Garland and the horror stories about the amount of pills she was on. How her system withstood the abuse it was put through is unfathomable.”
Garland’s parents had been in the entertainment business. They put their three daughters on the stage as a vaudeville act called The Gumm Sisters. (Garland was happy to change her name). She started her career at the age of two and was quickly spotted as the talented member of the sisters. At the age of 13, she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. When she was 17, Garland achieved international recognition for her portrayal of Dorothy in
Hanratty, a Dubliner, believes Garland’s enduring appeal is due to her films that are often about escaping straitened circumstances and being able to live freely, love and be loved.
“That’s particularly the case in the idea of escaping from a black and white world of poverty to this magical place full of extraordinary technicolour and people and opportunities.”
Hanratty is no stranger to big theatrical extravaganzas and says he is lucky to be able to direct plays, operas and musicals. A big Shakespeare fan, his ambition is to direct all of the Bard’s plays. He began in 2017 and it continues with an examination of all of Shakespeare’s theatrical oeuvre. He spent two years in Tokyo studying with the director, Ninagawa Yukio, on a scholarship. A graduate of drama and Latin from Trinity College Dublin, Hanratty has also been on the board of the Everyman in Cork since 2023.
“The Everyman is in rude health at the moment. Our new CEO Brian Fenton and artistic director Des Kennedy are marshalling all kinds of projects. I think it’s a really exciting time for theatre in Cork. I’m proud to be bringing the Judy Garland show to the Everyman.”
Hanratty says that despite the “handicap” of being a Dubliner, he has had great times in Cork. “I’ve developed great relationships with a number of artists there, both from the Cork Opera House and the Everyman. It’s always a joy to get the train down to Cork. You’ll often be talking to someone after a play who’ll have made great notes about it.”
Future projects include directing a new opera by Colm Tóibín with music by Alberto Caruso. It’s called and is a newly commissioned piece celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Wexford Opera Festival.
Asked what is his stand-out memory from studying theatre in Tokyo, Hanratty says: “It’s to give an audience the most beautiful possible version of what you’re working on. I live by that.”
In the Judy Garland show, Hanratty says it is very much mirroring the great music the star brought to the world – as well as her complex nature.
- is at the Everyman in Cork from August 27-September 5; and the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, Sept 8-19. See www.everymancork.com
