Judy and Liza and Quentin – oh my!

I’ve had a lifelong obsession with a few choice icons and been equally fascinated by their professional imitators. The lookalikes, the tribute acts and those who portray these famous, real life figures on stage and screen weave an uncanny intrigue.

Lookalikes are an odd breed, making their bucks from a usually vague though sometimes eerie resemblance to someone with far more power and charisma than themselves. As a kid I was devoted to Marilyn Monroe and, as such, the lookalikes would inspire in me mixed emotions. On the one hand (if they were good) I was captivated. On the other hand I was a bit jealous that they looked like her, and hated that they had the gumption to think they could even touch her fabulousness. Over the years the jealousy slipped away and I am now intrigued by the fact that some well-established lookalikes continue to get work as they age. I’m pretty sure one or two are older than MM was when she died.

The fictionalised versions that appear in plays and films inspire a particular fascination because their incarnations have been authored out of an idea of the person and then, subsequently, interpreted again by the actor. As a kid an ambivalent favourite was Catherine Hicks in the TV movie Marilyn: The Untold Story, a film (apparently, roughly, vaguely) based on Norman Mailer’s creepy book about MM. This story was hardly untold but rather had been and would be retold again and again, I don’t know who they thought they were kidding. Still, I was/am a sucker for the two and a half hours of what amounts to a trashy biography in moving pictures.

But is this what the audience expects? I get why they do it; it’s how it’s always been done

Like most actresses who have played Monroe, Catherine Hicks bears no real resemblance to MM other than both women have heads with even features. Although I loved this TV movie, videoed it and watched it over and over until the tape went wobbly, Hicks falls foul of the same imitation that virtually all actors who’ve portrayed Marilyn do. They are actually copying the ditsy blonde character that Monroe acted in her most famous films. Presumably the actresses don’t bother to look at any footage of the actual person to see that she didn’t spend her whole life breathless and blinking. But is this what the audience expects? I get why they do it; it’s how it’s always been done. If an actress playing Monroe talked like an ordinary person, who would recognise that woman?

And this is the trick of playing a famous person – do you go for as-close-to-the-bone impersonation? Or – knowing you’re going to be scrutinised and can’t possibly duplicate the actuality of the star – do you try for the essence and hope that is enough for the audience?

This year, the City of London Festival showcased two theatrical pieces about famous icons. First up was Judy and Liza, starring Lucy Williamson and Emma Dears; a week later came Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope, a one-man show with Mark Farrelly. These actors were pretending to be some pretty major gay idols. Yoiks.

There must be something in the greasepaint soaked air because there’s been a whole schlew of Judy Garlands appearing on stage in recent years. Most prominently, Tracie Bennett wowed the West End and Broadway in End of the Rainbow, playing an end-of-life Judy in London in the 1960s. There’s also been Heartbreaker, adapted from John Meyer’s extraordinarily fabulous memoir about being engaged to Judy for a few weeks. And, talking of exquisite memoirs, there was My Judy Garland Life based on Susie Boyt’s book about being a Judy fan and having that shape the person you are. (A few Lizas have been knocking around too, from revivals of The Boy from Oz, about her husband Peter Allen, to the recent production Somewhere Under the Rainbow: The Liza Minnelli Story.) Seems like everybody wants to have a go at being these gals and audiences never tire of faux versions of the larger than life tragic belters. But for me, the most profound Liza has been a drag Liza. Trevor Ashley’s Liza on an E is something else: I saw him at the Vaudeville Theatre last year and found him jaw-achingly hilarious. As Liza, he is Spot On. And just when you think you can’t laugh anymore Ashley shares real pain and pathos that just pulls the sequined rug from under you.

If you’re going to portray one of these ladies, you’ve got to be able to put over a show tune

I’ve also seen Real Actual Liza in concert, twice. (It would have been three times but she cancelled her show at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2014 after her doctor told her not to travel.) I’m greedy – I always want more Liza – and behold, a camp miracle: in the same week of the cancelled concert, an ersatz Minnelli (and her Mama) sprang up in her place! For Judy and Liza, the COLF venue – a massive, inflatable bowler hat – seemed particularly appropriate: Liza and the bowler hat go together like Judy and ruby slippers. But while the theatre hat was novel, the really loud fans were a tad distracting in the quieter moments of this show, and kept up their overloud chatter pretty much all throughout the Crisp performance. Perhaps practicality over novelty next year? That said, all the performers held their audience transfixed, and at least “Judy” and “Liza” could belt over the blasters. If you’re going to portray one of these ladies, you’ve got to be able to put over a show tune. And… Tick! Beyond that, in terms of the performances, what we had before us were examples of those two different types of actor-interpretation, one an uncanny lookalike, the other an “essence” performer.

I worship both Real Icons, so I’m gonna go easy. Emma Dears looked exactly like Liza in her 20s, staring wide-eyed and vacantly hopeful. Her speaking and singing voices weren’t bad. It was quite spooky to be sitting right in front of her. Explaining how she approached Judy, Lucy Williamson told me she didn’t “try to ‘be’ her, more emulate her”. And I don’t blame her: Garland may have been a teeny 4’11” (as am I when I’m slouching), but those are some pretty ginormous showbiz shoes to fill. But this wasn’t the first time Williamson has tackled The World’s Greatest Entertainer – she was alternate to Tracie Bennett in End of the Rainbow – and I was surprised that she didn’t bother with the iconic on-stage gestures that Judy Davis got down pat in Me & My Shadows. Lucy’s vocals were belting to be sure, but there was just a touch of Garland in there. In the end, I felt that it was fairer to think of her portrayal as a “Judy type”, in a similar way that Bette Midler played a “Janis Joplin type” in The Rose.

Judy lived, sporadically, in New York in her last decades, and Liza and The Big Apple go hand in hand: from Studio 54 to New York, New York

For Quentin Crisp, Mark Farrelly also chose to go the essence route with just the lightest touch of imitation and, although there were moments when I saw the young performer beneath the old man makeup and fright wig, on the whole he nailed it. Farrelly didn’t do an exact copy of the voice, which was surprising. But actually, when I thought about it, he would have sounded OTT if he’d tried: Quentin’s own voice was like a parody of itself. The show used Crisp’s own words – why wouldn’t you, when you have such a witty and exacting, self-reflective commentator to draw from? The first act drew from The Naked Civil Servant and 1960s, Chelsea-bedsit Crisp. The second act had a more overt intertextuality, which led to a distinctly heightened atmosphere. Here we were watching Quentin Crisp in a one-man-show in New York at the end of the last century and near the end of his life. Farrelly played with the audience, interacting, keeping us enraptured. The most famous Faux Quentin is, of course, John Hurt, whom Crisp called “my representative here on earth”. In Naked Hope it may not have been Quentin or Hurt before us but I was certainly entranced and unsettled by Farrelly’s portrayal of that cantankerous Stately Homo of England.

If we were transported from London to New York by Naked Hope, we only got glimpses of geography from Judy and Liza. But New York and London were very much part of these women’s real lives. Judy lived, sporadically, in New York in her last decades, and Liza and The Big Apple go hand in hand: from Studio 54 to New York, New York. Judy loved London, playing concerts at The Dominion, Talk of the Town (now The Hippodrome), and with Liza and solo at The Palladium. In the early 1960s, Garland lived with her family in director Carol Reed’s house on the Kings Road. Liza went to school in Victoria; after her residency at Talk of the Town, Garland and her last husband moved into a tiny mews cottage in Belgravia. Quentin Crisp, the English Alien, ended his days in New York. And Judy Garland, who moved from Grand Rapids to Hollywood to New York to London, died in that little house on Cadogan Lane. C

Corinna Tomrley is a London-based artist who specialises in celebrity portraiture of camp icons. Also a filmmaker, her latest project is the experimental documentary For The Love Of Judy: The journey into the queer, camp legend of Miss Garland