Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Emma Dears, Helen Sheals.
Music: Greg Palmer.
There are icons and then there are those who, thanks to maybe one performance, one shining brilliant moment captured on film or record, will forever be immortalised, their images seared into the minds of the public, even those who were not born when they tragically passed away, their attitude remaining an engraved line on the monument on how stars are born and their names becoming the epitaph of the age. It is both a warning to how lives can be snatched away and never be truly our own, and it can be the huge embrace of knowing how much a human being can be loved.
To capture the lives of two of the most sought after names of the 20th Century, icons in their own right, both tragic in many ways, adored by millions and supremely talented in every way, is a near impossible task, to set the scene in a cabaret style and bring forth memories of conversations long since lost to the eternal and songs that still resound in today’s musical world, that takes passion, a remarkable obsession, an infatuation for the music and for the personalities that lay behind them. It is the framing of Ms. Garland and Ms. Minnelli by the fabulously talented Emma Dears and Helen Sheals that makes Judy & Liza such a wonderful spectacle to behold.
There has never been a doubt of just how loved both these women were and how they remain treasured, it is almost without compare, and if you cannot feel your heart break, allow the song Somewhere Over The Rainbow to destroy you with beauty, to see the absolute humour in Ms. Minnelli’ Liza With a Z or the incredible pathos in the endearing signature tune from Cabaret, then perhaps it could be argued that being in possession of a soul just passed you by.
It is in that soul that Emma Dears and Helen Sheals capture the moment, of being possessed by the spirit and the love, of the heartache and the salute of the times now filtered away like ghosts caught in a tornado, this is a show of reminisce and grief that is in itself a powerful acknowledgement of what these two vibrant women brought to music halls and cinema in their life- times.
Judy & Liza, a magnificent set of songs serving as a reminder that certain icons live forever.
Ian D. Hall