It was quite the surprise for Janet Gigliotti when she got the call.
A retired SD43 teacher, Gigliotti had appeared in a number of musicals around Canada when director Claude Giroux asked if she would be interested in playing the formidable Judy Garland.
Giroux read the script — a play with music by Peter Quilter — and immediately thought of Gigliotti for the starring role. “I didn’t plan it,” Gigliotti recalled, “but I was intrigued with his offer.”
This spring, Gigliotti and fellow cast members started rehearsals for End of the Rainbow, a production that focuses on the Hollywood star in the months leading up to her death, in 1969 in London.
In April, Ace Productions opened the Canadian version of the West End and Broadway hit at the Jericho Arts Centre and, on Saturday, it wraps up its run at the Deep Cove Shaw Theatre.
Next week, it launches at Coquitlam’s Evergreen Cultural Centre before it heads east for shows in Fort McMurray, Spruce Grove, Cranbrook and Chilliwack.
Gigliotti said audience reaction has been touching, noting an Aug. 30 benefit show in Deep Cove for QMUNITY — a non-profit group supporting queer, trans and Two-Spirited lives. Garland, she said, “was an icon in the gay community and they very much connected with her.”
End of the Rainbow centres on Garland as she readies for her five-week run at The Talk of the Town in London, England (now called the Hippodrome). She has her young fiancé, Mickey Deans, by her side as well as her pianist and hopes to shake off some bad press with a stellar performance; however, her addictions and bad relationships continue to haunt her.
Before she took on the role, Gigliotti said she studied Garland in the 1954 flick A Star Is Born, and read books by Deans (Weep No More, My Lady) and her second daughter Lorna Luft (Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir) as well as other biographies. She also watched YouTube interviews of Garland including with The Tonight Show host Jack Parr.
The research gave Gigliotti “an appreciation for who she was, her music and for the complicated life she had to live…. A lot of people can’t handle her downfall but I think it’s important for us to remember all of this. Some people today want to be famous but, for Judy, it wasn’t a good thing.”
End of the Rainbow recounts how Garland was popping up to 40 pills a day and had an unpredictable behaviour for most of her adult life. She didn’t show up and would sometimes keep her crowd waiting for hours. Her highs and lows began at the age of 13 when MGM told her she was too fat for the screen and demanded she take diet pills to shed pounds.
And because the studio worked her so hard, Garland took sleeping pills then, later, spiralled into drugs and alcohol. “It was unavoidable. There was no other path for her. Her voice wasn’t the best toward the end but she could still sell a song. It was amazing,” Gigliotti said.
But despite having worked in musical theatre for years (including earning a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for the Carousel Theatre’s A Year with Frog and Toad), Gigliotti said she hadn’t sung much of Garland’s tunes (recently, the former Centennial and Montgomery teacher appeared on stage as Rosie in Mamma Mia! and as Ms Hopkins in Life After, also in Toronto).
“I love her songs,” Gigliotti said. “I can sing them all day. They’re so meaningful.”
• Tickets for End of the Rainbow are $42/$34/$15 by calling the Evergreen Cultural Centre box office at 604-927-6555 or visiting evergreenculturalcentre.ca. A pre-show chat will be held Tuesday, Sept. 19 at 7:15 p.m in the lower lobby with Janet Gigliotti and Gord Roberts, and a talk-back is Sept. 21.
