Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lucy Williamson, Emma Dears.
Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, perhaps two of the biggest names in American show business ever and surely impossible to ever replicate on stage what they have each achieved and the adoration in which they are still held to this day. Whilst Judy Garland’s life was heartbreakingly cut short due to near obscene levels of pressure, Ms Minnelli has been a born survivor despite the huge ruby slippers she had to fill and yet in Judy & Liza it was if the two women had come back together just one more time.
Whilst impossible to recreate completely, both stars were captured in all the beauty and radiance, the ups and sometimes very low downs by the gorgeous Lucy Williamson as the talented but tragic Ms. Garland and the insanely brilliant talent of Emma Dears as her daughter Liza. If ever two women could capture and frame the imagination of what the two women meant to millions of fans around the world, then Ms. Williamson and Liverpool born Emma Dears fit the bill perfectly.
With the endearing music supplied by Simon Beck, Ms. Williamson and Ms. Dears took the Epstein audience down a path that started out with the young Judy Garland, then Frances Ethel Gumm, starting touring with her three sisters and what happened when she caught the eye of Louis B. Mayer. The beautiful highs of The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis, the birth of her daughters and becoming the star she dreamed of being, coupled with the emotional and near disasters of some failed marriages, Liza’s unstable home life and throughout it all some of the most recognisable songs of the 20th Century to keep the memories of those times alive.
Whether with the initial opener of outstanding duo of Together, Wherever We Go, the subtle joy of Married, the sarcastic humour in Liza With A Z, the haunting nature of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Maybe This Time or the fantastic Cabaret, each song was relished by both performers and crowd alike.
Fully deserving of their standing ovation by an appreciative crowd, Lucy Williamson and Emma Dears stood resolute in their preservation of two of America’s greatest musical and film icons.
An evening of stupendous and incredible quality!
Ian D. Hall